


Bodies in Time (Director's Cut Edition)

by BairnSidhe



Series: Bodies-Verse Director's Cut [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, BAMF Darcy Lewis, Bodyswap, Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Multi, Realistic war violence, Red Room (Marvel), Red Room and Hydra both SUCK, Resistance, Secret Organizations, Time Travel Fix-It, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 26
Words: 57,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27780739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BairnSidhe/pseuds/BairnSidhe
Summary: The women of Darcy Lewis's family have a powerful gift, or curse. They switch places with people destined to change the world when those people's lives are threatened before the important thing they are supposed to do happens.  Steve Rogers is one of those people, and man, that boy gets close to dead a lot. Fortunately his Swap is none other than all star badass Darcy Lewis.  James Buchanan Barnes thinks he's just along for the ride. But when he needs her Darcy is there, and he might just get caught up in this whole mess further than he thought.[PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A REVISION OF A PREVIOUS VERSION.]
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis, James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers
Series: Bodies-Verse Director's Cut [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2032333
Comments: 205
Kudos: 125





	1. First Swap

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Bodies in Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7970908) by [BairnSidhe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BairnSidhe/pseuds/BairnSidhe). 



> Welcome Back everyone! This is the Director's Cut and the plan here is to post everything all at once in one big binge-ready go. This means all the chapters will be available from the get go, so there will not be love fests on each one. However, I do still plan to interact heavily with the comments section and fully encourage readers to chat with one another in the comments. 
> 
> You guys made this series possible. Thank you.

It first happened in Darcy Lewis’s Judo class, practicing falls with the younger kids. She was 16, and she traded teaching the pipsqueaks for more advanced lessons, just to take some strain off. They weren’t poor or anything, but she liked to help pay her own way for things that were just hers. 

One minute Sensei Thorpe was pulling her into a toss to show the fall, then she really _was_ falling, and suddenly she was hauling herself up out of trash while some punk-ass bitch in stupid grandpa clothes comes at her. 

_Psha, like that’s ever gonna work._

She stood up calmly, noting and dismissing the fact she was now a boy. Crazy Grandma Bahrenburg warned her this sometimes happened to the women of their family. The Line, she’d called it. Mom never said it _didn’t_ , and she got pretty pissy about Ancient Greece and Plato for no real reason. Maybe it was time to drop the ‘Crazy’ from Crazy Grandma Bahrenburg.

First things first, she checked everything works as well as she needed it to. While colorblindness was freaky, she thought she could manage, since the guy was her height. She didn’t think she could have piloted the gigantic body in front of her.

“Ain’t this where you say ‘I could do this all day’ Rogers?” he asks. So, her swap’s last name is Rogers and living in, from the accent and clothes, the Great Depression era? Interesting. She tucked that away for future research.

“Nah,” she tried to let her voice sound native. It worked better than expected, probably the muscle memory of these vocal chords. “I mean, I could, but I won’t, because I don’t beat up on unconscious boys.”

“You little shite-kicker, I’m gonna…” 

Darcy never found out what he was going to do, because he left her a great opening and she took it. Martial Arts are not about honor or fair play, they’re about leveling the big guy so you, the littler guy, can run away. Some choice shots and a hip-check toss sent him head first into a brick wall. She pondered if she should feel bad about the wet crack sound, but feeling this body's asthma kick in and realizing he has a spine deformity made her not care, because what sort of bully beats up a walking health disaster? As she exited the alley, a guy with dark hair and blue eyes and a smudge of motor oil on his nose cornered her.

“Steve! Are you alright, bud?” He started doing a basic visual check, the kind she’d done dozens of times after one of her kiddos took a fall bad. It was sweet, and gave her a chance to realize how cute he was. “I heard Mac the Mountain was after ya!”

“Would Mac happen to be the Neanderthal throwback in that alley?” she asked, deciding that his level of concern over this body meant he could probably be trusted not to like, have her burnt at the stake or whatever.

The guy started, either at her lack of knowledge or her accent. But he checked the alley anyway, which she thought showed great sense. “How’d you do that?”

“I’m a 1st Class Senior Rank judoka. I’m also not Steve. My family does this... body switch thing. Pain in the ass, now I know why Mom bitches about Plato. But based on how sore this body is, probably good it was me driving not him. Does he even know how to fall? With a spine like this, he needs to learn, like five years ago. Ow.”

“That’s… very crazy, but probably true, since you aren’t hiding pain. James.” He stuck out a hand and Darcy shook it.

“Darcy. Tell him to slap the ground next time, it disperses the force and reduces shock and damage. Also, you need to get him to stop tucking his thumb when he punches. It’s not broken, but it hurts. I don’t know if I’ll be back, but I think I feel the switch. Nice to meet ya, cutie.” She winked at him. Then she was on the cot in the dojo.

“Gah, something died in my mouth, get me water.”

“You ok, Sensei Lewis?” asked a mousey orange belt barely out of elementary.

“Get me some water and I will be. And never ever fall that way, ever.”

“Got it Sensei!” Water was passed to her in her blue glitter sports bottle. “You said some strange stuff after you woke up, the first time, I mean.”

“Concussions can do that,” Darcy said non-committedly. “Which is why you tuck your head and slap the ground. I need to go home and rest now.”

Darcy did not go home. Darcy went to Grandma Bahrenburg’s place. She told her grandmother about it, and her grandmother wrote it all down in a blue leather-bound notebook. The kind with no lines, although her Grandma’s neat block print didn’t need it. And it let her draw stuff, although it was frustrating trying to explain an image. Words were her thing, not pictures. 

She’d see if it happened again, and maybe the blue book would fill up like the purple one her Mom had that she read sometimes but wouldn’t share with Darcy or Dad. Grandma said it could happen more and more, and as it did, she’d learn to feel it coming. The important part was keeping her Swap alive. Every person their family swapped with went on to do great things, save the world type things. Whoever Steve Rogers was, he was important, and likely to die before he did his important thing.

“Would you like to read the Journals now?” Grandma asked.

“But you always said they were too fragile to be looked at,” Darcy said, eyes going to the glass fronted bookcase filled with leatherbound journals. She’d always been curious, but they’d always been off limits.

“They are fragile, but I trust you to handle them carefully,” Grandma said. “I’m our record keeper, the one who holds all the journals of Swaps who have passed on. We learn from the past so that we may repair it. Our job is to darn the holes of history, patching them securely. To do that, we must _know_ history. I’ll arrange with your mother to have you over so you can read them and learn from them.”

From then on, Darcy had a new extracurricular activity. She had some time before softball started, but she had a feeling she wouldn’t be going back. The journals were more interesting. Some of the colored journals said they delayed the switch by a day to get to safety for their soul-swap. Some of them said they fell in love when switched. Most went through time and space; some just went through space to another place in the same time, and how far back was random it seemed. The dusky blue journal of her ancestress from the Civil War talked about when she met Homer, of the Odyssey. Grandma’s journal said she met Grandpa when switching and went looking for him, since he was only five years back. Everybody tracked one thing, the first swap happened concurrent with age. So Steve was sixteen. About to turn seventeen.

<^>

Steve thought he’d finally cracked, the way everybody said he would, lost his mental faculties. He woke up and the world was too bright, too full of things he couldn’t process. He turned his head away from the bright bars of light and stared at the padded mat beneath him. 

_Oh wow, apparently, if I am losing it, some of those rumors about guys like me were right._

Not only was he being blind sided with sight he wasn’t sure how to process, he had…feminine attributes. Really nice ones. He resisted the urge to touch one. He asked for a mirror and the negro man in the white outfit with the two colored knotted belt laughed. “Lewis, you hit your head too hard if you’re feeling vain. And you know damn well there’s a mirror to your left. Roll the other fucking direction, dumb-ass.”

Feeling indignant on behalf of his imagined female self, he protested. “Sir, there is a lady present, you shouldn’t swear like that in front of a lady.”

“When’d a lady come in, Lewis? The small fries are resting a bit and can’t hear, the moms aren’t here yet, and…” he trailed off, blinking. “Oh, you meant you. Ha! Oh, even with a concussion you crack me up. You ain’t a fucking lady, Lewis, and you swear worse than motha-fuckers I was in the Army with.” He was still laughing as he left. 

Steve stood up and tried to figure out how women even stood up with these things unbalancing them, turned to his left, looked in the mirror at a really stunning dame in a white outfit like the man, only with a belt of another color. Her lips were a dark color that seemed not to be painted with anything. Bucky said dame’s lips were usually pink, but the dark shades were red, and that usually meant lip paint. Her lips weren’t as saturated as the stripes on the man’s belt, so it was red and white. But were her lips still red if they weren’t saturated? Or were they pink?

“What are you looking at, Sensei Lewis?” asked a girl, she reminded him of Becca, Buck’s sister. Her belt was yet another color. He wondered what it was. Some mats on the floor were the same color. A glance out the wide shop-style window gave him a reference. Blue. Sky was blue, usually. But hers was dark, and bright. Saturated, he thought. This is what they mean when they say saturated. 

“I… don’t think I realized how pretty colors were before. Like that,” he pointed to a ruffled band that held back her hair. It was like the blue, but not exactly, and it had shiny stars on it. “It’s really swell looking. I like the color.”

“Thanks, Sensei,” the girl blushed. “It’s new, I got it at Claire’s, they had a sale on scrunchies. I have the purple one, and a green one, and a blue one. Marissa got red, pink and yellow.”

“Can I see them?” he asked in a way he hoped was casual. “I guess when I hit my head, I started seeing color… differently.”

“I… sure Sensei. But if you’re gonna puke, you gotta tell Sensei Thorpe, it’s the rules. But you know that.” He followed her off the padded floor, made sure to bow to the room as she did, and let the girl show him scrunchies. Other girls pulled out nail polishes to indulge his need for more colors. Then a sudden wave of nausea hit him and the negro man was back, putting him firmly in a cot, checking his eyes for something and telling him to rest.

<^>

Bucky handled the whole thing pretty damn well, he thought. His best friend and long unspoken crush had a person switch bodies with him just in time to beat a bully like a drum. And it was a dame, maybe, he thought a dame from the smile and the wink and ‘cutie’, but maybe it was a fella, one like him, but Darcy had completely flattened Mac 'the Mountain' O’Rourke. You just didn’t ask that sort of thing. 

It made as much sense as anything, he knew Stevie was special, maybe the universe or God or something knew it too, and put a competent person in place when Steve was going to get his special, stupid, reckless head knocked off. Then Steve passed out and Bucky carried him home. When he woke up, Bucky asked what Darcy looked like. Steve told him. Pretty dame. Dark hair, pale skin, red lips that were naturally red. _Wait a fucking second._ “Red?”

“Well yeah, it looked a lot like the Strawberry Margarita nail paint, and strawberries are red, right?”

“You saw colors?!?”

“Yeah, I mean, it was her body, and what would be the odds she was also colorblind? So I got to see colors, and the girls were real helpful, showin’ me new ones.”

“What was your favorite?”

“Blue. _Saturated_ blue,” he emphasized, and Bucky knew he had wanted to know what people meant, so the satisfied tone made sense. He trailed off, so Bucky nudged him.

“Oh, she was working with this guy, both of them teachers, and get this, he was negro! I didn’t say anything, but since I’m pretty sure she was in our future, will be, you know, well that means someday guys like your friend Zeke at the docks are gonna get fancy jobs teaching people stuff and be respected proper for their knowledge. You shoulda seen all the bowing to him before he taught ‘em stuff. All ‘thank you Sensei’ and ‘may we learn arm locks, please Sensei?’ and he had ‘em all watching him as he showed ‘em how to stand right to do stuff. _And_ he was in the Army.”

“Well, that’s great, pal, I’m just glad Mac didn’t flatten ya.”

“MAC THE MOUNTAIN HIT DARCY?” Steve shrieked. “Aww, geez, I forgot what was happening when I swapped.”

“Actually Darcy hit Mac. Pretty bad. He was knocked out in an alley when I caught up to you... Darcy... you know.”

“Darcy’s a dame, a classy one,” Steve said defensively. His Guardian Angel was a classy dame and classy dames did not go around getting in fights. “She’s not a scrapper or nothin’, you know, Buck.”

“Darcy is a 1st class senior judoka, which apparently means she’s a dame who can toss a man into the garbage even in your tiny body and throw a better punch than you and take a fall proper,” Bucky said with a roll of his eyes. “By the way, she said to slap the ground when you fall, and stop _tucking your goddamn thumb_ , ya punk. I told you that a thousand times!”

“Huh. Alright. Darcy is a classy dame who could hand Mac the Mountain his ass if need be. I guess they aren’t incompatible. It’s not like she asked for it.”

“You gonna draw her?”

“What do you think? You’re the one who says I draw everything.”

Next week Bucky found a sketchbook with pictures of a laughing negro man, a group of girls in pants and belted jackets clustered around tiny bottles and squiggly bands. Then he flipped the page and saw her. Darcy. Gorgeous Darcy, who could hand Mac the Mountain his ass so hard he hadn’t bothered anybody in a full week. 

Thank the Lord their apartment’s water heater didn’t work half the time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Judoka: someone who practices Judo.
> 
> Notes:  
> Timeline note: Darcy is born Sept. 25 1986. Steve is born July 4, 1918 This swap is August 14, 2003, and also in May 23, 1935. On her 17th birthday, she'll test into Shodan, 1st degree black belt. At her current level of progress, she can test into Nidan, 2nd degree black belt, at 19 and Sandan, 3rd degree black belt, at 23.
> 
> Steve's difficultly standing is partly boobs being heavy/awkward if you're not used to them and partly that Darcy doesn't have scoliosis so her body moves entirely differently from the bones out.


	2. Take Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy deals with a gang in her own, very Darcy way.
> 
> Steve learns more about Swaps.
> 
> And Bucky is forced to think about his relationship with Steve.

The second time it happened, Darcy felt it coming. She knew, somehow she had enough time to turn the car and get to Grandma Bahrenburg’s house before she collapsed. She’d miss school, but she could get a note. She felt the first punch land as she pulled in the drive, it was weird. Gasping, she got to the bell before letting herself fall into Steve’s body.

_ Another alley, geez, is this guy homeless?  _

And the  _ smell _ , she wanted to thank whoever invented odor blocking trash bags before she was born. She shook off phantom pains and real ones and leveled her eyes with the leader of the pack in front of her.

“Bad idea, boys. See, I don’t quite like this behavior, and I’m gonna stop it.” She spat a mouthful of salty blood on the ground in front of the leader and noted the lack of tang from iron. Steve must have anemia. She’d try to write him a note about cast iron cookware and liver. 

The guy she spat at laughed but it was a pale imitation of scary. Darcy knew scary. Scary was getting hit by the boob fairy at age nine and fending off creeps before she could watch PG13 movies. Scary was twin towers falling on TV, and being at war. Scary was anonymous cyber bullies attacking her. Scary was the words “boys will be boys”. Scary was life as a Millennial female. Scary, she could handle. This, well, this was just pathetic.

“Gonna get you this time, you punk,” muttered someone, and she noted him for future retribution. She’d read up on the slang of the era.

“Aw, geez, fellas, all ya had to do was ask me nice like,” she said with a grin that was sexy and come-hither on her own face. On a guy, to men locked into heteronormative roles, it was creepy. She sauntered up to the leader, using more sex than she would have the courage to in her own body. “If you say pretty please with a cherry on top, I’ll let you clean my kitchen.” He recoiled and she winked. It hit him like a pile driver blow.

“I… I’m not, not….”

“Not queer? Neither am I, far as I know, but I’m young. But now you know what sexual harassment feels like, ya asshat jerkface. Unwanted attentions, from unwanted persons who don’t take ‘no’ for an answer. And stop using queer or any other slang for queer folk as a pejorative, it’s totally normal for some people to be wired that way. Female hyenas regularly have rough lesbian sex with each other, and fish, man, so many fish are freaks in the metaphorical sheets. So don’t pull nature into this debate, She is not on your side. And don’t use God either, ‘cause ya can’t have a deity that makes and loves each of us and is infallible, if ya also want to say a punk, or a fairy or whatever is going against God by being themselves. If ya wanna push the issue, you’ve gotta own your fear, you giant homophobic bag of dicks.”

“You’ve got a lotta nerve Rogers.”

“About a hundred billion of ‘em,” Darcy replied cheerfully. “Normally. I’m running low, and trust me pal, my last nerve, that ain’t a place ya go for fun. Ask Mac the Mountain. He went looking for Mohamed and he found me instead.”

The leader swung at her and she dropped low to sweep his legs out from under him. He went down hard. God, none of the assholes from the 30’s knew how to fall. A sharp kick to the genitals kept him down as Darcy faced her next opponent. He also fell like a ton of bricks to a pretty simple nerve hit he could have deflected. The guy who’d called Steve a punk tried to rally them, although everyone ran when she grabbed his head and smashed it face first into a wall with no finesse, just brute force she had gotten in softball. It was a lot like pitching, only short distance and into solid brick not a bat or a mitt. 

She left him on the ground and took stock of her injuries as she exited the alley. A convenient storefront window told her Steve was actually pretty adorable under the broken nose and split lip. She rummaged in his pockets for a tissue, and got a large handkerchief instead. Well that was better anyways. She reset the nose with a muffled ‘ow’ and caught the blood in the fabric.

“Steve!” She turned to see the hottie from the last swap.

“Heya, James,” she greeted him, tipping her head a bit to channel the blood flow down and not out so she could pull the cloth down from her face. “Can you buy a cast iron pan? Steve’s iron levels are low.”

“Darcy,” he said, smiling. “Doll, how many people did you break?”

“Mentally or physically? I ask because I only beat up three, but I think I melted the brains of every goon there. Oh, and I really hope Steve is secure in his masculinity, because I kind of hit on them to do it. Not literally, I mean put the moves on them. To show them why people don’t like being harassed.”

“I think Steve would be fine with that, Doll. Is he safe in your body?”

“Should be, I left when I was at my Grandma’s door. She’s the one who told me about the swaps. Still, try to get him some iron supplements, cook in cast iron, have him eat liver, that sort of thing, blood should not taste like this.” She spat another gob into the cloth.

“You seem really aces about blood for a dame.”

“Dude,  _ never _ end a sentence with ‘for a dame’. We don’t like it. And I guarantee you I’ve seen more blood than the average boy my age. The idiot I’m hi-jacking and you aside, most men don’t see more than shaving nicks and skinned knees. I do all that and my monthly subscription to Satan’s waterfall. I woke up in a pool of my own blood once and my only concern was whether or not I’d remembered to switch the sheets.”

“That’s fair. Walk you home?”

“Sure, I got no idea where he lives anyway. I’m not a New Yorker either.”

“I’ll get you home.”

<^>

Steve swapped out as a dozen guys were cornering him. Apparently he’d disrespected someone’s girl by offering her a chance to get away from a guy who made her clearly uncomfortable. He didn’t think that qualified, but as he felt the switch he tried to slow it down. He didn’t want Darcy to have to deal with all these guys. But he snapped into her body as an older woman opened a door. He was kneeling and there was a statue of a goose, dressed in a print dress and a bonnet next to him. Weird.

“I take it you’re Steve,” the older woman said. “Come on in.”

He spent a long time talking with Mrs. Bahrenburg about the swaps. Her whole line, mothers to daughters back so far she kept some of the journals in sealed boxes. He thought the journals were really keen, and told her so, and she had him draw pictures to go in Darcy’s journal. She also told him it was okay to write her letters in it. He decided he needed to get one of his own for her to use, too.

_ Dear Miss Lewis (or would you prefer Darcy?) _

_ This is Steven G. Rogers writing to thank you. Apparently you’ve saved my life twice now, and probably will keep doing so until I do whatever I needed to do. That’s a real swell thing of you, even if you don’t have much choice in the matter. I’ll try to get in fewer fights, but if someone’s being a bully, I can’t just say nothing, you know? _

_ Your grandmother’s a real kippy lady, with lots of juicy stories. Oh, she just told me you don’t use those words like that. She’s a  _ neat  _ woman with lots of  _ interesting  _ stories. And she said that me and you’re the same age! Of course you knew that, it’s how this works. Sorry, I’m not good at talking with pretty dames, even if I am a pretty dame at the time. Or you are, but  _ _ I’m in you _ _ Sorry, that probably sounded bad.  _

_ What I mean is, I really like getting to know about all this, and I’m glad I won’t get my block knocked off until I do the important thing. I hope it’s real big to make up for you having to do my hitting. Oh, and Bucky, James, he’s a big flirt (you probably noticed, since now he knows you’re a tomato, I saw him looking at the picture I drew of you) but don’t let that make you think he’s all wet (a bad person), he’s a swell friend to have. I’ll try to get a book like this so you can write me too. _

_ All the best, _

_ Steve Rogers _

_ P.S. What’s the color of this nail paint? It’s real pretty. _

He felt a little rush in his heart and dropped the pencil.

“You going now, dear?” asked Mrs. Bahrenburg.

“I think so, will you ask Darcy to try and write me the recipe for those cookies you made?”

“Of course, Steven. Darcy’s very lucky to have a nice young man like you for a swap.”

Then he was in his home with his bare feet in Buck’s lap.

<^>

Bucky took his time with Darcy, giving her a chance to talk to him, rant really, but it wasn’t too different from Steve’s rants about women being people too and respect, although she also added in queers, and when she said it, the word didn’t sound like a filthy sinner’s choice. She said it like you’d say blonde. Just a part of who a person might be. It didn’t even faze him when she put her feet on his lap. He just undid the laces and started rubbing them.

“So why do you think you’re still here? Not that you’re not good company, Doll.”

“Maybe Steve needs to do something in my body as much as I needed to keep his skinny ass alive. If he’s busy, you know, he might not switch back until he’s done. And I left him with Grandma, so he’s not in danger of anything but a headache trying to understand this. Why? You worried?”

“He’s a walking disaster. I’m always worried. My tombstone is gonna read ‘Here lies James Barnes, dead tragically young of worry.’ I guess if he was going to get killed on your side, you’d switch back, though.”

“Yup. But maybe you miss him for another reason.”

“What?”

“I’m young, not blind. I’ve had enough guys ogle me over the years to know what a dude who is ass over teakettle in l-o-v-e looks like. You think  _ I’m _ hot, but you want to get heavy with  _ him. _ And much as I’d say yes to kissing you, hot-stuff, not while I’m piloting your crush’s body. That’s a level of weird I don’t want to touch.” 

Bucky gaped at her. “I’m… it’s not….”

“I think I feel the swap coming, so I guess this goodbye for now,” she said quickly, sitting up. “Remember, cast iron, liver, and see if you can get him on those garlic and honey treatments for the asthma, and the coffee... oh and eucalyptus oil or what’s it called, bishop’s weed if you can get it. Take care of the lungs and it should help with the chronic infections.”

“I’ll remember.”

“Buck?” Steve’s face shifted and Bucky could tell it was his friend, not the confusing girl from moments before.

“Hey Steve, welcome back. You busy over there or something?”

“Yeah. Darcy’s Grandmother, Mrs. Bahrenburg was teaching me how it works. And I wrote her a letter. Darcy, that is. I was hoping I could get some paper and a pencil stub so she can write back. I’m not real likely to stay out of fights, and I never know which ones might need Darcy, so I figure, and Mrs. Bahrenburg figures, we’ll keep swapping for a while. The first ones tend to match ages, but if we become long time swappers, that might change, it’s more to do with need and maturity later. So I want to get to know her.”

“Makes sense. She’s a snazzy fuss if you can get her.”

“She ain’t mine, Buck, she’s her own. And I don’t ever meet her.”

“She’s still snazzy, and what’s more of a guy’s devoted dame than the one who literally breaks physics to bail him out of a fight he can’t handle, and does it without makin’ him look like a crumb?”

“One I can talk to?” Steve offered skeptically.

“Steve, I’m your friend. But there ain’t a woman under eighty and over eight you can talk to. We’ll get you a letter book. Maybe you can write back in it so she can read what you wrote.”

“I got one on her side. I’ll see what she thinks. Thanks for not thinking I lost it, Bucky.”

“Pal, if you lost your marbles, I’d dump mine in the east river, cause it ain’t worth keeping my mind if you don’t have yours. I’d rather be loony together.”

“Thanks.” Steve leaned against him, and Bucky wondered if Darcy was right. He liked her, and the picture was definitely a dish, but hot as she was, he kinda loved Steve in ways he’d never talk about at the docks. So he just let Steve cuddle him for warmth. He could think on it later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Clean the kitchen: anal sex act  
> Aces: good with, relaxed about  
> Tomato: attractive woman  
> Snazzy: very good  
> Fuss: a steady girlfriend  
> Crumb- a loser  
> Dish- hot woman
> 
> Notes:  
> The word punk has had many different meanings and the meanings have changed throughout its history. It can mean "of poor quality, worthless or weak in spirits or health", but there were several queer-related uses in the 1930's. One was "an inexperienced man who is a sexual partner of an older man" (with the implication being effeminate receiving partner in gay sex, similar to twink) or "dried, decayed wood, used as tinder" which seems unrelated until you realize this is also the dictionary definition of a faggot of wood, which gave its name to the slur for gay men. Check out the pitt.edu slangwall for more.
> 
> Darcy's quip about Mac looking for Mohamed is based on a common mondegreen or misquote of the idiom "If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain." The misquote is "If Mohammed will not go to the Mountain, the Mountain must come to Mohammed."


	3. Third Time's the Charm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy makes a new friend, Steve encounters one she'd already made, and Bucky is finally accepting the fact his life has been hitting him with a Clue-by-Four.

The third time they swapped, Darcy had to fake food poisoning to get out of a test. Feeling the gut punch helped her sell it, because she really did feel sick from that. She got to the bathroom, locked herself in a stall, and pulled out her journal. She was thankful it had a little pocket for the matching pen and was small enough to fit in the cargo pocket of her pants. Quickly she scribbled a note for him braced against the wall and let herself fall.

She landed on the floor of a school hallway, taking the body just in time to land correctly, although Steve’s twisted spine still took more of the impact than she liked. Whelp, it was familiar territory at least. She saw his pencils on the ground beside her. Nope, nothing doing, she was pissed as she looked up at a guy who wasn’t that much bigger than Steve, but obviously in better health. Of course, that was a low bar. That was a bar  _ inset into the ground _ .

“Yah gonna make a big deal, now Rogers? Gonna go cry to yah momma? Oh, right, yah don’t have a momma.” Ok, this dick made the previously sexy southern accent sound bad. She was ready to end him.

“Steve, don’t, it’s not worth it,” said a tiny girl, smaller than Darcy and thin too. Her voice quivered in the way universally known to women as ‘I don’t want to have him angry at me, but I do want him gone’.

“By ‘it’s not worth it’ do you mean you aren’t worth it? Because I beg to differ. You’re worth it. Worth the time, the effort, the love and care you deserve to have for yourself as a person who matters. He isn’t. Either worth it, or a person who matters.”

“Oh, them’s fightin’ words, Rogers.”

“Good thing Ah brought mah fightin’ hands then, _ Tex _ . Now put ‘em up or shut up,” she drawled in a bad copy of his accent.

The fight was swift and brutal. Tex obviously knew what he was doing when it came to a brawl, but not only did Darcy follow the “in a real fight there are no rules” school of thought, Tex had no clue how to handle a judo fighter who trained southpaw. All his openings were on her stronger side. She took one hit to her right shoulder that popped it out of joint only to uppercut him with a slight left cross that twisted and knocked his head back. He crumpled.

“Heya,” she said to the wide-eyed girl. “Can you help me put this back? I need my elbow at a 90-degree angle when I do the rotation.”

The girl moved to help her, Darcy held back a hiss at the gentle movement. “I’m Angela. You might not know me; I think we only have math together.”

“Nice to meetcha, Angie, name’s Steve. Oh, yeah, you already knew that, you said it earlier, sorry. Alright now hold it like that, even if I sound like a dying cat.”

Angie giggled, and Darcy rotated her body until the pop of the humeral head returning to the socket reverberated through her body. “Thanks, Angie. I’m good now.”

“Well, that was real swell of ya, Mister Steve Rogers. You takin’ on a tough like him.”

“Eh,” Darcy shrugged with her good arm. “It’s all math, biology, and lots of practice. Force is mass times velocity, so if you’re a shrimp like me ya gotta get fast to make up for it. The neck is the least protected part of the spine, which controls the body, and the head makes a good lever, so ya hit up under the chin to give ‘em whiplash. Do it right, and it’s a nap tap, out like a light. Also, aim for the goodies if you get cornered.”

“The… goodies?”

“The thangs, the ol’ dingle dangle, the twig and berries? The crotch, you aim at the crotch. Trust me, it lays ‘em flatter’n Kansas.”

“Oh!” Angie said in dawning realization. “I guess I wasn’t ever supposed to think about… that.”

“Oh, sweet summer child,” Darcy said with sincerity. “Most problems in the world are caused by men. Therefore, most problems can be solved by hitting the right mark on a man. Kick ‘em where it hurts and run is a good option, so is bursting into big tears and hysterics. No idea how to handle that, most of ‘em, throws ‘em off. Use this knowledge wisely, grasshopper.”

“You don’t really talk like a fella, Steve. No offence.” Darcy realized she’d been advising like another woman would. She turned to Bucky’s stories for an excuse.

“Single Ma, Dad died before I was born, it affects things. Can you help me put these back in spectrum order? Reds on one side, violets on the other? I can’t see colors.”

“Oh, sure, Steve. How’dya draw so good if ya can’t see?”

“I can  _ see _ , I just can’t see color real well. It’s like… old photographs, lots of greys and some sepias. But a shape is a shape, and I got a friend who helps me with what colors go where. Here he comes, actually. Hey, Bucky!”

“Steve,” he smiled at her and Darcy reconfirmed her ass over teakettle assessment. “You alright? I heard there was a…” he trailed off looking at Tex.

“We had a bit of a Code Darcy, if ya know what I’m sayin’,” Darcy said. “This’s Angie. Angie, that’s trouble, also known as James.”

“I’m Bucky to my friends,” he said, shooting Darcy a look.

“You two look like you’ll be fine without me, so, I think I’m going to track some ice down for my shoulder. See ya ‘round.” Darcy turned and walked off, pulling out the book of notes.

I _ ce your shoulder, Steve, I had to let it get dislocated. Southern Accent Guy, I called him Tex, really knows his boxing. Also I think I may have set you up as an Equal Rights Activist. Women being fully functional human beings is a hot-button for me. BTW (by the way) that Angela girl is cute, I called her Angie, you may want to stick with that. Of course depending on how deep JBB is in that river in Egypt, he might be asking her out. Dunno. :( Your pencils are now in spectrum order, red to the left, violet on the far right. _

_ Darcy _

_ P.S. It’s not paint, it’s not even polish; it’s lacquer you heathen. Note the shine. And the color is Sunset Rose. It’s partway between bright pink and soft orange. _

_ P.P.S. One part melted butter, one part sugar, two parts flour, splash of vanilla extract. Chocolate chips, dried fruit, or nuts if you got ‘em and can eat them. Mix well, bake at 35 for 10-15 minutes.  _

<^>

Steve swapped out as his pencils got knocked to the ground. His painstakingly ordered pencils for his art. “Dammit!” he swore as he felt Darcy’s body curled in a spot between a tiled wall and a toilet. Well, it couldn’t always be cute kids and nice grandmas, could it. A loud whirring sound caught him off guard and he slammed into the wall when he startled. “Ow.” The whirring noise turned off and a soft voice spoke. "What was that?"

"Think it was Lewis, she ran in and took the far stall," said a second voice that sounded like it's owner was leaving, and, yeah, door opens and closes.

"Darcy?" He didn't respond to the girl's voice. “Yo, Double D, you alright in there?”

“Excuse me?” he asked, somehow both confused and affronted. And upset, because he was obviously in the girl's bathroom.

“Darce, you can’t fake food poisoning every time there’s a grammar test,” the girl continued. “Is it Dom? Is he cheating off you again? I told you, just use that kung-fu shit on him.”

“It…it’s judo,” Steve stammered. Of course Darcy would be in the girl’s room, she was a girl. Only Steve had no clue with women, at all. This had been a topic of great debate with him and Buck.

“Hah! You didn’t say no on moral grounds. I’m making progress.”

“Well, it would also be morally wrong, seeing as how I can take down an angry seven-foot-tall bull-wrestler. I might accidentally kill the guy!”

“You can? When did you do that? It wasn’t one of your matches, I go to those.”

“Eh… there was an alley and a skinny boy about to die?” he offered vaguely.

“Oh, Darce, I really don’t get you. Jumping in to save people you don’t know. You’ve been like this since we were  _ five _ , and not once has it made any sense.”

“Are you saying you wouldn’t fight if it was me getting my face paved?” he asked. This was obviously Darcy’s Bucky, which was easier to handle. Only her Bucky didn’t seem to be waffling between dizzy over her and just a pal.

“Well, duh, if it was  _ you, _ I’d claw their faces off and rip their jugulars out with my teeth. Or, you know, call the cops, since I’m not Xena the Warrior Princess like you.”

“Yeah, well I guess if I spend it all a little bit here and there, I don’t commit murder when you get a bully.”

“No, you just ruin his life.” Steve could hear the smile. “So, you coming out or what, Double D?”

“I didn’t actually lie, is the thing. I don’t feel like myself.”

“Seriously? You didn’t eat the cafeteria food did you? Wait, no, you have second lunch. Do not, I repeat, do NOT eat the caf food today, stroganoff, more like stroga-stop. Is your cycle early? I have Midol.”

Steve looked at the note she’d written.  _ When in doubt, blame your menstrual cycle. _

“Yeah, it’s early I think.”

“Ech, I know that one. Here’s the Midol.” A slim dark hand reached under the door to pass him a pair of white pills. “You got flow yet, or just cramps, because I have spare Tampax if you need it.”

“Um, just cramps.”

“Cool. You wanna hear the stupid shit that Jan got into in first lunch?”

“Sure thing, but, um, no promises I’ll remember it.”

“That bad, again huh? You have the worst cycle. I’ll try to take your mind off it. Anyway, Jan asked how we know we all see colors the same way, like what if what we both agree is red looks like what you would call blue. And everyone was like that is the dumbest thing, only then, everybody got like two minutes into the rest of the conversation before realizing what she said made sense. Because like, color blind people might know grass is green, but if they can’t see green it might actually look yellow or brown or whatever.”

Steve let her talk and wrote Darcy another letter.

_ Dear Miss Lewis, _

_ Thanks again for taking this kind of thing, must be a real big deal for your family, you going off to save me. I guess I better do something important with my life now. Or I already did, or you wouldn’t be swapping places with me. Either way, I won’t let you down. _

_ Your friend is nice. She wants you to beat up a guy named Dom, and I may have told her you shouldn’t because you took down Mac, who wrestles bulls. Then I had to explain you did that in an alley, because a skinny stick boy was about to die. I left out the time-traveling body-swapping part. She says not to eat the stroganoff, whatever that is. Also, I took your advice and she gave me Midol. I’m putting the pills in your left pocket. Do you always wear pants? I’ve seen you in the white uniform ones, and in the blue ones last time, and now these tan ones with all the pockets. I hope dames, women, don’t stop wearing dresses. They’re pretty. But I guess trousers are easier to move in, and the pockets are useful. I suppose by the time you start wearing them, I’ll be old enough not to care. _

_ Your Swap, _

_ Steve Rogers _

_ P.S. Did you say anything to Bucky about him being not all about dames? Because he said you talked about queer folks just being folks, which, I live in Brooklyn, it does not shock me, this news. But now he’s extra invested in acting like even more of a flirt. Which means double dates. I hate those. _

<^>

Bucky thought Darcy handled being caught as Steve in public pretty well. Code Darcy was a fantastic way of saying that without it sounding insane. He chatted up Miss Angela Martinelli for a bit, got a date for that Friday with her and a friend and Steve. Who had returned, obviously himself, with a repurposed hot water bottle on his shoulder.

“Hello Angie,” he said shyly.

“Well, if it ain’t my knight in shinin’ armor. Hope you don’t mind, but me an’ your pal here made plans for the three of us and my friend Suzie to go out to Coney Island this weekend. I hear Luna’s gonna reopen the Cyclone, even though that guy fell off it a year ago.”

“Uh, sounds really keen. I gotta get to class.”

“He’s shy,” Bucky explained.

“Wasn’t earlier,” Angela said. “I don’t think he wants to ride the Cyclone.”

“That was the fight, he sometimes gets a boost after getting to drop a guy. Not that he’s violent or nothin’, it just doesn’t happen often, so it’s a rush.”

“I think you’re havin’ me on, Mister. Friday, after school, you can try to make it up to me.” She patted his chest and walked off.

Later he caught up with Steve, who was headed home alone. Which was insane given the number of dangers a guy like him could get mixed up in, especially with his inability to walk away from a bully. The whole reason Bucky took his lunch break at the school was to check up on him and make sure Steve wouldn’t be leaving late or early or nothin’.

“Hey, Steve, wait up, pal. You know it takes a little for me to get from the mechanic to the school.”

“Yeah, I know. Just like you know I can’t go on the Cyclone. A guy  _ died  _ on the Cyclone, Buck. And Darcy’s not gonna make it safer. I gotta keep my head down until I get the thing done.”

“Like you kept your head down with Holt?”

“I don’t control the swaps.”

“Fine, that gang back in July. You keeping your head down then? Steve, there’s a difference between surviving and living. Go on the date with the pretty girl, ride the coaster. Live.”

“Alright, but if I throw up, I’m aiming at you.”

“Atta boy, come on Steve, Darcy did most of the work, you can get Angie on your arm in no time.” Bucky tried to ignore the warmth in his chest as he put an arm on Steve’s shoulder. He was just happy this double date wouldn’t ignore Steve, right? Right? No, he was hosed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Southpaw: lefthanded  
> A tough: a bully, particularly a strong arming one  
> Dizzy over: super in love with  
> Pal: friend, and NOT in the 'gals being pals' way.  
> Having me on: lying to me as a joke  
> Hosed: done for
> 
> Notes:  
> Southpaw is the opposite of how most western fighters train. All the openings they leave are in the ideal place for a left handed person to use, since most western fighters don't fight against people who are lefties. Meanwhile, Darcy is a righty, but she was trained to fight both ways just in case, and can use the openings left to her.
> 
> Bull-wrestlers really existed in New York. In fact, wrestling with livestock was a common show of strength in port cities with a large number of dock workers angling for better pay. The larger the animal, the stronger you were, wrestling a bull indicated vastly superior strength and could get you much better wages.
> 
> In Steve's era, Brooklyn was THE gay area of New York. It had the highest concentration of gay bars, dance-halls, drag shows and hotels that catered to the out-of-town same-sex lovers of any district in the state. It would be the Eastern Seaboard, but Atlantic City, New Jersey had an area that just barely tipped the line on hotels and drag cabarets into superiority.
> 
> Luna is the park on Coney Island that had the famous Cyclone that gets referenced in CA:TFA. Many deaths are attributed to it, although fire wiped out many records.


	4. Summer Projects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer is an educational time of year. Darcy learns something scary about Swaps, Steve learns something new about women's healthcare, and Bucky learns about learning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Headsup for returning readers, this chapter contains expansion not included in the original work.

Darcy swapped with Steve some more. Fights, mostly, but one time when she was in the locker room after practice and Steve almost tripped on some stairs. She took advantage of the pounding adrenaline and shortness of breath to scribble out a note in the little booklet they used when they had a chance. 

_ I won’t tell him you almost got killed by stairs if you NEVER draw anything you saw. _

She did quit softball after that, it wasn’t worth it and she wasn’t their best player anyways. Instead she spent more time at the dojo, and more time in the library, learning anything she thought would be useful. Her mom got her a stack of Worst Case Scenario survival guides and asked if she wanted to talk about it. Darcy shook her head, but secretly she did want to. It just felt weirdly personal.

Over the summer, she dove into research in the journals in Grandma Bahrenburg’s house. She learned what she could about how the swaps worked, their potential and their risks.

“What’s this one?” she asked her grandmother. All the other journals were bound in leather, even if the pages inside were from spiral bound notebooks, loose stationary, or parchment. Any time the binding on one failed, Grandma picked it apart and rebound it, carefully preserving the pages. Several of the older ones were technically scrapbooks at this point, but they were all colored leather. The one Darcy was pointing to was a thin volume, maybe the size of a playbill from a theater, bound in black satin with a pink bow wrapped around the spine.

“The Eldest,” Grandma Bahrenburg said sadly. “And the Youngest. Swaps start at the same time for both people, you know. And in ancient times, people faced deadly danger far earlier than nowadays. That’s the Journal of Iphigenia Carter, who was five when she swapped with someone we believe was prehistoric. She reported intense cold, hunger, and being chased by some sort of bestial man. She had three swaps, then a seizure. She didn’t wake up.”

“Why? Did she die in the swap?”

“The seizure happened moments after her return,” Grandma said. “We believe the distance of time was just to great to bear, especially since Iphigenia wasn’t exactly a strong child. Girls in the Victorian period weren’t encouraged to learn the skills you were, although in our Line she likely would have been taught  _ something  _ if she’d had time. As it is, we can only hope she succeeded in saving her swap in time.”

“That’s… really scary,” Darcy said.

“It is, but this story isn’t meant to teach you fear. I tell you this to save your life; do not take the swaps as a guarantee of long life or happiness. We promise ourselves we will do our best by those we save, for the good of all, but that is a dangerous and painful road. Even if you win, if you protect him, he would be my age now, or older. He may be dead, success doesn’t promise  _ them _ a long life either. And if you do win, you’ll know it by the ending of the connection, and you won’t get to say goodbye. A happy ending is unlikely, the best you can expect is bittersweet.”

“But you and Opa….”

“We were a rare case. My swap wasn’t terribly far back, and to be honest all he needed was some help with social skills so as not to be executed for homosexuality before cracking the Enigma Code. Also, it was  _ his _ crush on your Opa that drew my attention to begin with, and a promise I made him that led me to actually track him down. I still never got to say goodbye to Alan, he was working a problem and I thought we had till the end of the War, and then… it was like getting a haircut, you reach to pull it in a bun and your hand misses, because the hair isn’t there anymore.”

“I can’t just not care about them, though,” Darcy said.

“No, of course not,” Grandma reassured. “But care about yourself first, and don’t burn bridges  _ now _ to keep  _ then _ warm.”

<^>

Steve was pretty sure they’d managed to shift the times around enough that they were in the same season, usually. Certainly it felt just as hot when he swapped in to Darcy’s backyard as it had been outside the St. George, where he’d been running errands. He didn’t know exactly what had happened, but now he was on his knees holding a clump of dirt with some plant sticking out of it looking half dead.

“Darcy! Careful with the Hymenonema, we’ve already let the poor things spend too long in their pots, we need to get them in the ground now.”

“Yes Ma’am,” Steve said cautiously, eyeing the hole he spotted in the dirt, and gently placing the dirt cluster in it.

“Hmmm,” said the woman overlooking his work. “You’re wool gathering, and that’s not going to work if you’re helping plant. Go get washed up inside and grab a soda or something. I’ll finish up out here.”

Steve dutifully did, although he paused in shock at the coolness of the house. Sure, the furnaces were better in the future, and Darcy didn’t feel every passing breeze like he did, but he’d expected summer to remain the sticky, hot miserable season it had always been. He washed his hands and looked in the icebox, except there was no ice. Instead frigid air blasted his face.

“Woah there, kiddo, we’re not trying to refrigerate the house,” said a man. “Grab me a can of Coke while you’re in there.”

Steve happily snagged two cans labeled in familiar red and white. He carefully watched the man pop the tab on his before copying the action. He must have done it wrong, though, because the soda bubbled up in a short shower.

“Ah, futz! Sorry, I’ll get this cleaned up.”

“No worries, Darce, you’re clearly having a rough day. I got this one.” The man grabbed a towel from the handle of the oven. All Steve wanted was to get in private, preferably with the Journal, and ask Darcy what he’d stepped into. He’d been warned about keeping the swaps a secret, too many people would assume she was crazy, or worse, believe her and want to experiment on her for it. “You wanna talk, kiddo?”

“Uh….” Steve blanked, then hit on Darcy’s previous advice. “It’s my period.”

“Acting up again?” the guy asked, seemingly not at all upset by the topic. Steve… didn’t know how to handle that. “We can get you another appointment to talk to a gynecologist. I know they said you’re too young for birth control, but if it’s this bad….”

“I don’t need birth control!” Steve blurted. He had no idea what the man was talking about but surely Darcy wasn’t a loose woman, and how dare this man imply she was! But he’d said it like it would help with a problem… and her friend had seemed to think Darcy regularly had pain bad enough she couldn’t remember things. “Do I? I mean, what would…”

“It’s just hormones, sweetie. To balance out whatever is making it so hard on you. Your mother takes them too, you know, and it’s not because we don’t want you to have a little sibling.”

“Yeah, I mean… I just,” Steve sighed. “I’m not… doing things that make the birth control part necessary and I don’t want you thinking that.”

“Honey, you’re going to remain virginal and untouched in my mind until I’m holding a grandbaby, and even then I’m going to suspect a miracle of science. Now go lay down with a heating pad and play some of the music you like.”

“Yes sir,” Steve said, and went to lay down.

<^>

Bucky was helping Darcy bandage a sprained ankle when she asked him what classes he was taking.

“Um. I don’t. Someone’s gotta pay for the apartment. It’s the last place Steve had his Ma, I can’t let him lose it. I’ve been working half shifts at a mechanic and picking up hours at the dock for a year. Couldn’t graduate because I had to miss too many classes.”

“What about a GED?” she asked, Steve’s small hand balancing on his shoulder while she tested his weight on the wrapping. “You’re hardly a dumb man, it seems a shame you’re not getting an education, or at least proof you could if you wanted.”

“A what now?”

“General Educational Development? The thing that’s not a high school diploma but you take a test and it’s basically a high school diploma?”

“Not something we have yet, Doll. I mean, I learn when I can, a lot of practical stuff. Math, how cars work.” He gestured at Steve’s ankle. “Medicine.”

Darcy laughed and even from Steve’s mouth it sounded different. Steve laughed with the tops of his lungs, afraid to draw too deeply on the weak organs, a breathy sound like a dame. Darcy laughed from under her gut, her whole body dedicated to showing her mirth. She did everything like that, and it was why he loved her.

Which made the fact that he was still also hopelessly in love with Steve so deeply confusing.

“Tell ya what, Dollface,” he said with a grin to distract from the guilt swirling in his gut like a pit of acid. “You can teach me when you’re here. Bring me puzzles or riddles to work from the future, or leave some for Steve to read while you’re here. He’s got a good memory, he’ll be able to recreate what he reads.”

“Sure thing! I’ll have to mark the stuff he’d better not get into,” Darcy mused. “History books and like, inventions from the future. But you said you like math, right? Math should be safe.”

“Math is safe,” he agreed.

The next few months, every time Steve swapped, he came back with new things to share with Bucky, gifts left for hum, specifically, on Darcy’s side. It made weird happy butterflies go storming around in his chest, but there was also the gnawing acid pit of guilt. He felt like he was betraying her when he felt the soft glow of catching Steve’s smile, like basking in the sun. He felt like he was cheating Steve of his friendship when he eagerly awaited the next message from Darcy, especially since Steve theoretically had to be in life threatening danger just to get them.

“She’s taking AP History courses in school,” Steve said. “We worked out a system, she’ll mark everything I can’t read in red or pink.”

“What’s an AP?” Bucky asked. Steve was using more and more of the terms he’d learned from Darcy’s time, and sometimes it stung to be left behind like that, but Bucky buried that feeling in the acid pit and focused on learning what he could.

“Advanced placement,” Steve explained. “Classes just for the extra smart kids, they can count as college classes too, when she goes to college.”

“Wow,” Bucky sighed. “You ever wonder what it’d be like to go to college?”

“You’re plenty smart to get in, Buck,” Steve said. “I’d go to an art school if I had my choice about it. I’m not much of a book learning fella, but they need artists to do up the posters for movies and advertising all that stuff in newspapers, and I could do that. I need more practice drawing people, though. Different people, not just you.”

Bucky made a weak attempt at mock offence, but in his head he started seeing if he could make their budget work for more advanced art classes for Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Opa: grandfather (German)  
> Hymenonema: asters native to Greece.  
> Wool gathering: daydreaming or spacing out.  
> Dollface: the pet name Bucky uses for women when he's in trouble.
> 
> Notes:  
> Iphigenia Carter is not in fact related to Agent Carter, it's just a reasonably common last name.
> 
> In addition to Hymenonema, Liz's garden also contains Rhodian fritillary, a type of lily native to Greece. Basically her garden is what happens when you take all the plants that would have been around in Greece in the 5th century BCE, plant them in Kansas City, and replace the ones that die with more of the ones that do okay.
> 
> The GED test was originally developed in 1942, specifically to get around the rules requiring a high school diploma for men in Bucky's situation.


	5. Senior Year Traumas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The swaps continue, and Darcy starts pulling on some dangerous strings.  
> Steve gets a chance to be the one protecting her for once.  
> Bucky is just worried about his two reckless loves getting in too deep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning: The rewrite put an instance of attempted sexual predation closer to "on screen" than it had been. No rape takes place and everyone reacts swiftly and correctly to remove the perpetrator, but please watch your headspace and read responsibly.

Senior year was going fine, but then she saw him in History class. 

Steve, smiling up from her history book. As Captain fucking America. And James was right beside him. She read the entire chapter on the war in five minutes while the teacher talked about Pearl Harbor, skimming until she found more on Steve’s unit, the Howling Commandos. 

All former prisoners of war, except Steve. One of the only integrated and international units and the only unit to put an African American, and a Japanese American in the same unit as equals. Equipped by Howard Stark directly. Commanded by Chester Phillips, then Colonel, promoted to General after the war. Barnes gave his life in the line of duty, shortly followed by Captain Rogers who downed a plane to prevent the war from reaching American shores. 

She felt sick. That’s what she was saving his life for. So he could die. What if he downed that plane thinking she’d come for him, save him somehow? She’d been warned that these swaps very rarely had happy endings, but this?

“Ms. Lewis, is there something you find particularly fascinating about this topic?” Dr. Grayson asked her. He meant ‘why the fuck are you staring at your book like it killed your puppy’ but Darcy answered him honestly. Mostly.

“Steve Rogers. He volunteered for a human genetic potential experiment, first of its kind and never duplicated, risking his life, then he gets shunted into the propaganda mill. Instead of staying safe there, he risks his life again to cross enemy lines to bring back over 400 POWs, including his best friend. Then he takes a group of these POWs, again, including his best friend, and launches one of the more successful strike teams, risking his life countless times. Then his best friend dies, and _ only days later, _ Steve flies a plane into the ground. It says ‘heroic sacrifice’ in our book. I think it was more. A guy who risks his life every chance it’s possible? That’s not a lead up to a heroic sacrifice, that’s a man who needs some freaking Prozac.”

Dr. Grayson blinked at her. “Are you saying you think Captain Rogers, the man known as Captain America, willfully committed suicide?”

“I’m saying I think dumb luck and friendly intervention were the only things keeping the moron alive.”

“Ms. Lewis, please see me after school is out. In the meantime, please focus on the mechanical advances of WWII.”

After class Dr. Grayson assigned her mandatory extra credit. He did that. Both a punishment and a reward for the brighter kids. She was to research WWII and the Howling Commandos and write a ten-page paper on the psychological make-up of the group.

Darcy did it, without a word of complaint. It was relevant to her interests, after all. Not only did she look up books, but she dug up records. Anything not classified. She found census data on all of them and used it to figure out how the Howlies lived after the war. 

After enough digging, asking questions on internet forums that were half history nerds, half conspiracy theorists, she got a grumpy old guy on the phone. He claimed to be Dugan, but insisted she call him Dum-Dum, because he hated his real name. She didn’t blame him. Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader Dugan was a horrible name and his parents should be ashamed. 

Dugan was maybe six kinds of crazy and paranoid to boot, setting up signs and counter-signs for their talks. She tried to talk around her knowledge of Steve and James, and she noticed him talking around something too, but she didn’t know what. He genuinely believed that Hydra hadn’t died with Johann Schmidt and Steve going down on that plane, but that was only part of it. He also felt his life was in danger. 

It was. Her last contact with him, he said something about Carter, and getting her a message, and then, he broke an unspoken rule.

“Darcy, when you can, when it matters, you tell that Irish mother’s son he ain’t allowed to die. Only person Cap ever took orders from was you, so you tell him he can’t die until all of us are down. All of us. Because I swear the guy what just took out my cameras is that same dumb sunova who fell off a---” 

A thump came over the line and Darcy held her breath as the static resolved into a soft conversation. The line was picked up. 

“Kukly, leave it.” 

Then he hung up. It had sounded… like James. This was too big. She wrote her paper, handed it in the day before midterms, and tried to forget.

<^>

Steve noticed some changes. When they swapped, he was more and more often in private, or with Darcy's grandmother. When he swapped into her room, there were yellow sticky notes explaining things on stuff per usual, but now there were more and more vivid pink ones warning him away from things. The history book and the sleek future tech stuff he understood. He should avoid learning specifics about the future so he didn’t go back and disrupt the past, his present. The red file folder, he understood less. 

She did leave him with presents, color wheels and books on color theory and once a big binder of paint colors for him to look at. She marked things for Bucky with blue post-its, math puzzles and a book from someplace called MENSA full of logic problems. Sometimes he left her drawings, since she left out art pencils and a nice sketch pad with a note reading ‘Go for it!’ with a little squiggle he thought was an artist’s pallet. He drew pictures of her room, and the view out her window and sometimes he drew her, making faces in her mirror to make a study of her face. He would use her magazines to practice poses, drawing the models until he knew the proportions of the human body as well as he knew how to draw a cube. 

They continued to write, and sometimes she’d leave recipes for him, for cookies or bread, or for nicer foods made with stuff they could get. Mashed potatoes with beef gravy was much better than simple boiled potatoes, and the gravy could be made with scrap beef that didn’t cost much. Some of her directions were odd, but they ended well.

That didn’t stop him worrying about the red file folder, how it kept getting thicker. Or how he noticed dark smudges under her eyes when he drew her. He sometimes just slept when they switched, since he wasn’t sure she had been, and her body needed to. 

One day he switched when nothing was even happening. He didn’t know why, he was just in the park drawing pigeons after school, but suddenly he was in Darcy’s school, and there was a man next to her, leaning in. He had a look like he wanted an answer to a question Steve hadn’t heard.

Then the man put his hand on Darcy’s knee, scooting her skirt up, and Steve bolted upright and screamed with all the air in Darcy’s lungs. He hadn’t ever screamed like this, his own lungs wouldn’t have supported it, but he knew how to make the most of what little air he got, and he knew how to be loud. You had to be loud to be heard, when you were a boy as small as he was.

Other adults rushed in, and it didn’t take much acting for Steve to play the offended dame. He was offended, on Darcy’s behalf, and on behalf of all the girls this creep probably hit on. Just thinking about what could have happened made tears well up. The creep was taken away, and Mrs. Lewis, the woman with the flowers from before, showed up to take care of Darcy. Steve tried to find the way back, to let her come home now that it was safe, but he’d never done this part before. He seemed stuck, so he let Mrs. Lewis handle the police and the lawyer and the principal of the school, and he stayed quiet in the fluffy blanket Ms. Lewis wrapped around her daughter’s shoulders.

He picked at dinner, Darcy may have loved her mom’s meatloaf, but Steve hated meatloaf in general. Desert was better, little scoops of bright fruit sorbet that made his eyes water with the intensity of the flavors.

Darcy’s Dad tried to suggest a movie or a game, but it didn’t feel right. Steve needed to find a way to get back into the correct body. He excused himself and went to lay down. He grabbed one of the stuffed animals off the top of her bookcase and curled around it.

“Today sucked so many butts,” he told the pink elephant. He reflected he was picking up her way of using words as he came to in a tub of cold water.

“The hell, Bucky!”

<^>

Bucky noticed the tensions Steve mentioned in the way Darcy moved, in the way she spoke. He still was pulling her out of alleys and parking lots and all the normal places Steve fought. She was slowly, very slowly, given their time, teaching him things. She taught him the physics of taking down a bigger man to teach Steve, but she also taught him trajectory calculations and trigonometry. She quizzed him too, so he was forced into the library to learn even more than what Steve memorized for him. He picked it up fast, but he had no idea why she thought he needed it.

Then came a night he thought maybe he and Darcy had been too late. Steve was laid out on the ground, but Darcy clawed her way up the side of the diner while Bucky dispatched the thugs.

“You ok, Dollface? They did a number on you.”

“Be better if you stop grabbing my words. Talk like you’re meant to, jerk.” Darcy sighed. “Steve is fighting me on the swap, I think he’s trying to protect me. Which is incredibly ironic.”

“Alright, but what do we do here? I don’t think I’ve seen this much damage on you before. Or on him.”

“Ice. It’s mostly bruising, icing it will limit swelling and lower pain.”

“If you say so. I usually try to keep him away from cold.”

“It’s May, he should be fine if you dry him off with heated towels and I don’t get his hair wet. Icing isn’t fun, but it helps.”

“You sure you want to?”

“I iced after a bad slide to home in a softball game. And after lacrosse try-outs. Field hockey girls are fucking savage. But, I’ve done this before. I can handle it.”

They got Darcy home and in frigid water to her neck. She quizzed him more on trig and traj, as she called it. This time she tossed in questions involving air currents and Bucky got a bad feeling she knew something about him he didn’t. 

Was he going to become a famous trigger man? He didn’t think he would, but if Steve got sick, nothing Darcy did could make him well, and he might take that kind of job to get medicine. Of course, she’d warned him about laudanum and other opiates and heroine and things that you found in medicine. She’d told him how to grow his own penicillin instead. 

He fed her noodles with scrap meats and discount onions, garlic and ginger root with the dark or mushy bits cut off, a recipe she had him go all the way to Little China to get the noodles for, but was very filling on not much cash. And the woman who sold the Udon noodles liked him, so he also got seasoning packets. Darcy ate and then fell asleep with Bucky holding Steve’s head up. When he came around, Bucky was ready with towels from in front of the stove. After lodging many protests about the cold water, Steve gave in when Bucky poked a bruise.

“Darce said the cold will help. Now shut up and get dry and into clean stuff.”

“Fine. Oh, did Darcy say anything about a teacher skeeving on her?”

“No, she in trouble?”

“Not anymore. Got him arrested for feeling her up.”

“What a creep! I oughta… but the time difference,” he finished sadly.

“I know. But she’s in good hands. Her mom is just as scary as Darcy is, and she’s got this. I’m just glad I could switch in when I did, although I wonder what exactly she was doing this afternoon that ended with me in a tub of ice.”

“I found her right before dinner, I thought that’s when you swapped?”

“No, I tried to swap back before dinner. Meatloaf.”

“Understandable,” Bucky said.

“And this great ice-cream type stuff. Future food is amazing, when it’s not meatloaf.”

“Well, we’re just gonna have to live long enough that I get to try some, then,” Bucky told him, and it felt like a promise in his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Kukly: Doll, as in child's plaything (Russian).  
> Creep: a sexual deviant.   
> Trigger man: a gun-for-hire, a mercenary, or the designated shooter in a gang or the Mafia  
> Skeeving: coercing sex, usually from a position of power like a teacher, boss or priest
> 
> Notes:  
> Technically there were "integrated" units that had black cooks, quartermasters, and grave diggers beside white soldiers, but these units were strict about putting Black servicemen in non-combat support roles.
> 
> Timeline wise for the second and third sections, at about 4, Darcy was being propositioned by her teacher and Steve was doing art. They swapped, because Steve not having the actual context meant he could object and protect her in a way that Darcy (who had been groomed by said teacher for exactly this reason) would have struggled to do. Darcy took the opportunity to go poking around New York trying not to think about what was happening to Steve in her body. Around 6, the parts that needed Steve were done, but Darcy had put her foot in her mouth by not being a native speaker of Brooklyn Slang, and Steve couldn’t swap back because she was needed to fight the fight she got into. She had relaxed enough by 8 for both of them to go back to their own bodies.


	6. College Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy messes with the swap capabilities, gets into college, drinks a rufie and sings timeline-inappropriate acapella.
> 
> Steve has an accidental run in with historical texts and a rude awakening to both his future and his present.
> 
> Bucky would just like his reckless assholes to be less fucking suicidal for once, please.

Darcy made it through graduation, winning enough judo matches by ippon to skip a year of time in grade and test into Nidan, second degree black belt. People commented on her drive, but they usually got uncomfortable and looked away after a few moments of careful silence. Nobody liked being reminded of what had happened with Mr. Johnson after school, or how Darcy had crystalized her plans after that day. When nothing seemed to matter, Steve did; Steve, and helping him save the world some day.

All her work on the Howlies went in the red folder and later in a red binder as it outgrew the folder. She researched battles and tech and the histories of the men Steve would lead. She harbored outrage as she learned things they didn’t teach in school, about internment camps and the Nisei, about black soldiers like Gabriel Jones, about the number of times Steve disobeyed orders to do the right thing.

As Darcy dedicated herself to knowing everything she would need to fight a war, she also dedicated herself to learning how the swaps worked. She got so good at pin-pointing when she’d swap that she hardly ever had to fake getting sick to get away from class. A bathroom pass, and then she could walk slowly to the bathroom, lock herself in a stall and swap if need be. Her journal and a book of sudoku puzzles lived in her bag at all times. 

Steve joined her in the experiments with the bond, both of them curious what it could do, since nothing they’d read had mentioned anything like what had happened that day. A swap coming forward to save the woman they were connected to. 

They learned he could call on her and let her see but not swap. She watched more than one movie that way, from Bride of Frankenstein and Captain Blood. And Anna Karenina, which she had to repress her memory of the accented voice on Dum-Dum’s line to watch. She took him to RENT, and then to Batman Begins and Serenity (after a marathon of Firefly, of course). She wanted him to see a world where heroes were real, where people fought for the underdog. A future he could be proud of. She tried to make their summer before she went to college fun, something bright for them both to hold onto.

Her letters of acceptance came from several local universities, Stanford, and Culver. She couldn’t afford Stanford, not without a scholarship. She had one offered, an athletic scholarship for her Judo, but with what was coming, she wasn’t sure she could compete as often as the scholarship required. Culver was less expensive, and came with a housing scholarship based on her grades. That, she was sure she could keep up with. The local universities didn’t get a second look. She had to get away from the way people looked at her.

She declared History, with a Political Science Minor. Her plan was to run through as fast as she could before she started linking with Steve during WWII. It was kind of ambitious to attempt an actual four year Bachelors, but it was worth it to her. More sticky notes went on her history books. Her assigned roommate was a big partier, so she wasn’t in their room when Darcy swapped as much as the three of them had worried. 

She still laid out the guys that attacked Steve, but now that she was junior fourth class it was easier to do it quickly and harder to do it without severely harming them.

She drew Steve into study sessions now and then, especially on her Constitutional History class. He pulled her into art classes so she could help him with coloring. They didn’t do that often, looking up color names and swatches with her eyes while watching him mix hurt her head. Instead she queued up every Bob Ross episode in one playlist and showed him how to use it while she handled stuff on his side. Then came the day he called her before getting himself in a fight.

She was watching yesterday’s episode of Chuck on the network’s site and trying not to think about the paper on WWII she was supposed to write, and then she was watching a guy slip something in a girl’s drink. 

_ Swap _ , she thought. 

_ What I thought,  _ Steve thought. Then she was in Steve’s body. She walked briskly to the counter, and grabbed the tainted glass out of the girl’s hand.

“Sorry, lady, you don’t want this one. I’ll get you a replacement. One with less Micky in it.”

“What?” she gasped.

“Your date here, he doped it. A regular Micky Finn, this guy.”

“I did no such thing,” the man protested as the bar patrons watched the scene.

“Suuure ya didn’t. A real upstanding citizen, you are. You’d never drug some poor woman so ya could get what she wouldn’t hand ya.”

“You have no proof!” The man was red and shouting. Silently apologizing to Steve, Darcy looked at the barkeep.

“If I pass out, get James Buchanan Barnes to take me. Tell him I called a ‘Code Darcy’.” She waited for him to nod and slugged back the drink. Moderately better than the frat house tub juice she’d let her roomie talk her into. Then she felt the effects, the giddy rush as the drugger gaped at her in disbelief. A giggle escaped her. He was sooo screwed. She wanted to sing. Hey, why not?

“You've been around all night and that's a little long. You think you've got the right but I think you've got it wrong. Why can't you say goodnight so I can just go home, Micky? 'Cause when you say you will, it always means you won't, and you're givin' me the chills, baby, please baby don't….” She hiccuped and tapped the guy’s nose sloppily. Distantly she reflected that while Steve couldn’t hold liquor for shit, he did have a lovely singing voice. 

“What the heck did you put in that drink?” demanded the woman, slapping her date as Darcy grabbed him from behind, keeping him from going after her retreating form.

“Oh Micky, what a pity you don't understand. you gotta take her by the heart before you take ‘er by the hand. Oh, what you do Micky, do Micky, you break my heart, Micky! Now when you take ‘em by the hooves everyone's gonna know. Every time you move, people looking for a show. It’s guys like you, Mickey…” She trailed off on a high note as Bucky swept her up in his arms and the bartender took over the drugger.

“What the devil did you drink, you loon?”

“A Micky Finn,” the bartender supplied. “Guy said he didn’t do it, so your buddy chugged it. Then did, whatever that was.”

“A Code Darcy. For the insanely stupid but somehow right thing being done because he thinks he’s immortal. Or doomed to die young, so he’d better make it count. I can’t tell.”

<^>

Steve pulled in Darcy because he didn’t know how to protect the dame and hit the louse who drugged her. When he swapped he hit the pause button on her computer. The show was a favorite and came on during a class she had to be in, so she used the website to watch it the next day. He didn’t want her missing it.

He yawned and contemplated a nap, Darcy was pushing herself with the class load and he didn’t know why. Then her roommate, Candi, with an ‘i’ at the end, came home and he grabbed the nearest book. History. Damn. But he had to look engrossed, they’d practiced this.

“You are such a nerd, Lewis,” Candi said, and not affectionately. Steve dug further into the book. Oh God. World War TWO? Wasn’t one enough? Wasn’t that why they fought the last one? To end war? Hitler, expansionist Germany, Fascist Italy, Japan bombing the Navy. He flipped pages quickly. The camps. There were pictures of camps, one for Japanese Americans, one for German Jews. They looked the same. He felt sick, but kept reading. He turned the page and saw Bucky. The tall blond man beside him in the stupid outfit. He shut the book and looked up. Candi was looking at him with a worried look, her hairbrush halfway through the bright pink strands as she paused to stare. He absently noted she would look better with purple.

“Have, um, have you seen the red binder?”

“The obsessive binder of supreme secrecy? Under your bed like always, Lewis. Seriously Darcy, you look like you saw a ghost.”

“I feel like I did. It’s just, I drew a connection, um….”

“Oh, a nerd thing. Gotcha.” She finished pulling her hair into the tall poofed design Darcy had called the faux-hawk. Hideous, but better than when she attempted dreadlocks. According to Darcy you needed the right kind of hair to do that without it turning nasty. “Come to the mixer tonight, it’s just some alumns and honor students and a few Greeks, I swear, it won’t be the frat party again. You need to live some.”

“Sure, what time?”

“Starts at nine, so anyone important won’t get there until ten, unless you want to schmooze the wrinkle farm.”

“Oh, ok.”

“God you’re a loser, Lewis. At the party, I don’t know you, got it?”

“Yeah,” he replied sarcastically. Then she started changing and he grabbed the nearest book that wasn’t a history textbook. Diary of Anne Frank, that seemed safe.

It wasn’t safe.

<^>

Bucky got an inebriated Darcy back home and let her serenade him with off-key songs and ramble about politics in eras he knew nothing of until she fell asleep and started snoring. His first wake-up check to make sure everything was fine had Steve sobbing into his shirt. The next morning Steve refused to talk about it.

“Come on Pal, I just wanna help.”

“So did I. But I read something I shouldn’t have.”

“History book? She marks those.”

“It was handy to escape the roommate. I hate that woman. But it was the Diary that did it.”

“YOU READ HER DIARY! Lord, Steve, you NEVER do that.”

“No, it was published. It was by a girl named Anne Frank in Amsterdam, five years from now.”

“The world end in five years or something?”

“It does for a thirteen-year-old girl named Anne. Bad stuff coming, Buck. War.”

“That’s why Darce keeps angling to get me better at math, I’m gonna be a trigger man alright, for the fucking Army!”

“Yeah, you might want to dust off your dad’s rifle and start practicing. I can stay out of danger for a week while you go visit his buddies at Lehigh. They’d love to train you to it, and you can do the math.”

“And you?”

“Everybody else that Darcy’s family protected did big things. Started wars, ended wars, started countries, invented things, saved lives. They’re in history books. None of them sat the big stuff out. I think… I think I’ll need to enlist.”

“Steve… you are two hundred pounds of good intentions in a ninety-pound sack, but said sack is made up of health problems. You’ll be 4F.”

“I’ll be in that war if I have to hide in a plane or walk across the damn Atlantic. You don’t know what they’re doing, Buck.  _ Right now _ , what’s going on over there. People are dying. My life has to have a greater meaning, if Darcy has risked hers so often for it and I can’t think of a better meaning than helping win that war.”

“Steve,” Bucky started.

“No, you want to wrap me in cotton wool and keep me safe, but I need to be there,” Steve insisted. Bucky fought down his panic and kept his voice soft.

“I know. I’ll try to help you.”

“You… know?” Steve sounded confused, the fight bleeding out of his voice and ending on a question.

“Yeah, ya punk, I knew you were gonna be important when I hauled you outta the trash when we met. And I care about you too much to stand in the way of that. Even if I die of worry.”

“You… did you just….”

“End of the line,” Bucky said, rubbing his neck. “Was that not clear enough? I love you, and I refuse to be made to feel bad ‘bout that.”

“I love you too, jerk.”

They shared a bed that night, even though it was late in summer and sticky hot. Bucky left to go to Lehigh the next day with Steve’s oath he’d stay inside and paint. He had a poster commission to finish, anyways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Win by ippon: Win by judge decision for technically flawless execution of a throw, pin, or lock.  
> Micky- a rufie, a knock-out or other date-rape drug.  
> Micky Finn- a person who uses Mickys to get something from another, sex or money.  
> Tub juice- (Modern) a form of homemade alcohol often served at college fraternity parties where some individuals may be too young to legally buy booze. A descendant of bathtub gin, hence the name, not often made in an actual bath tub.  
> Loon- crazy person
> 
> Notes:  
> Winning five consecutive matches by ippon qualifies a Shodan to spend one year as a Shodan instead of two (the average) or four (non competitor). Darcy has been advancing normally, but she has shit to work through and that speeds her up as she works that out on the mat. Also, this means she can probably test into Sandan, third degree black belt, at 21.
> 
> All the movies mentioned came out in the summer of Steve and Darcy's respective senior years, except _technically_ Rent came out in the fall of 2005, not the summer, but we're changing that because it should have been a summer blockbuster.
> 
> Mickys could take many forms, from sedatives like Chloral hydrate, to euphoria-inducing drugs of many types (which is what Darcy drinks) Mickys are still in use today, so be careful with your drink, never let anyone but the licenced bartender or you touch your drink at a bar or club, never leave it unattended and keep it away from other people's hands. If you feel like you've been drugged, call Emergency Services immediately, even if you feel good. If you observe someone dosing a drink, a safer way to handle this is to simply remove the drink from the victim, call Emergency services, and make sure the perpetrator remains on the property until authorities arrive to test the tainted drink.
> 
> Hey Micky! is a song from 1981, by an artist named Toni Basil, and has since seen many covers, remixes, and parodies. This version, where 'Micky' is obviously an unwanted presence in the singer's life, was based on a improv riff I saw at a campus LGBT+ Cabaret, artist unknown, and re-written mostly from memory, apologies to the singer if I got it wrong.
> 
> America did indeed have internment camps for ethnically Japanese American citizens in WWII, eerily similar to Holocaust camps, minus the intentional mass deaths. Many Japanese-American soldiers, like Jim Morita in the MCU, were recruited straight from the camps with coercion, threats and the promise that the more men of the family who fought, the more food would be given to the remaining family. Morita has every right to be salty about being from Fresno, California, since he was likely recruited in this way.
> 
> The Diary of Anne Frank is a classic piece of historical non-fiction, the actual diary of a girl in Amsterdam who hides from the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands. Heartbreaking and honest, it is seen as one of the best source documents of WWII European Jewish experience.


	7. The Drums of War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy explores culinary adventures with Steve and snipes an e-bay auction.
> 
> Steve studies and prepares for the war he knows she can't warn him about.
> 
> Bucky trains as a sniper, then gets called upon to mentor more snipers.

Darcy was pleasantly surprised by the rapid drop in immediate danger swaps, even if it did mess with their timing. Things seemed to be moving faster for Steve than for her, and she started keeping a graph in the back of her journal to track the speed up. That had been mentioned in the journals, sometimes years would pass in one Swap’s life while only days passed in the other’s. Hopefully, she could graduate before she had to go to war, but she might not either.

In hopes it could stabilize the connection, they did things like movies, or music, or buffets. Steve loved Golden Corral, with all its choices. Darcy’s waistline did not so much enjoy his methodical way of trying a little of everything, but she knew he wouldn’t live to taste sushi, so she indulged him.

_ Hey, what’s that? _ Steve thought.

_ Fondue fountain, melted chocolate you dip stuff in. They also can be made with cheese, or boiling broth for cooking meat. Cheese is usually paired with bread, chocolate with, well anything,  _ Darcy thought back. 

She skewered a chunk of pineapple, a slice of banana and a strawberry on a stick and slowly rotated it under the fall of dark chocolate. Back at her table, she sipped her Fanta and used a fork to dislodge the strawberry and pop it in her mouth.

_ Gee whiz, _ Steve thought. Over the link, she could feel his happy sigh.

_ Chocolate fondue is as close to sex as you can get without a partner _ , Darcy agreed. 

Steve’s giggle on his end brought back a memory of the last, and honestly first, time she’d had sex, a one-night stand at the ill fated frat party. Her adrenaline had spiked and Steve showed up like he did for their movie nights, only for a show nobody wanted him to see. Both of them had been happy when Darcy found a way to put up a ‘do not disturb’ sign on her swaps during dates. She called it the Psychic Sock, but since then she hadn’t felt the need to take a date farther than making out. She had shit to do, and it wasn’t something she felt like explaining, but it would be unfair to drag some poor guy into their drama.

Turning her thoughts away from her non-existent love life, she tried the banana, and Steve dropped the link so fast Darcy hurried to swallow and try to follow him. Her vision blurred and she caught a glimpse of a pin-up that looked suspiciously like her before the table cleared up in front of her.

_ Steve, you ok, buddy?  _ Darcy thought at him

_ That was not a banana. I don’t know what that was, but it was not a banana, _ Steve told her.

_ Oh, damn, I forgot about the banana plague. The ones you’re used to died off to the point where we can’t use them as a cash crop, so now we eat Cavendish bananas. The banana flavoring remained the same because it was formulated when your bananas were around, _ Darcy explained.  _ Did you not like it? _

_ No, it just didn’t taste like a banana. I think if it were cooked or something so I didn’t have to think about it I might like it. They haven’t messed up pineapples have they? I always wanted to try it, but it’s so expensive, _ he thought wistfully.

Darcy answered him by eating the chocolate coated fruit. Their brains made simultaneous ‘mmm’ thought at each other.

_ Steve, Steve, they have pineapple upside-down cake. _

_ Go for it. _

Darcy regretted that excursion the next day. That didn’t stop her from doing it again. She also went to a candy store called It’Sugar to buy replica 1930’s and 40’s candy to test against Steve. It was for a paper! And because Skybars and Big Cherry tasted amazeballs awesome. She kept a collection of vintage candy in a metal Captain America lunchbox she paid waaay too much for on e-bay (curse her competitive nature and the doggedness of SecretAgentMan45) and another of the newer stuff in a Firefly-themed bento box, for Steve’s perusal when she did have to swap with him.

<^>

Steve kept his head low as he watched for signs of war. He grabbed day-old newspapers out of the stacks he carried from the stands to the shops that used the papers to package delicate things and rushed home to read up on international events. This Adolf fella was a nasty piece of work, but he was still, disturbingly, described as charismatic in the papers. Steve painted for anybody who’d have him, doing shop adverts and portraits of people, frequently as gifts for their special guy or gal. He took to always making a second copy of a fella’s picture and ensuring he knew the name of the man’s Ma, usually through polite chit chat. Some of these young men were gonna go to war, and many of those would die. He wouldn’t wish that knowledge on any mother, so he was gonna make sure they got the pictures to the next of kin.

Aside from work, he only left the apartment to do research, not just the newspapers but trips to the library to study Europe’s geography, the most common phrases in the languages there, old books on military strategy and why what works when, and the best ways to make another person’s strategy fall apart. Sun Tzu had some good points on fighting asymmetrically. Small forces toppling big clumsy forces. Like Judo, and the other things Darcy used and showed Bucky how to teach him, small smart fighter beats big dumb fighter every time.

The reduced time outside meant seeing fewer bullies. Seeing fewer bullies meant getting in fewer fights. Getting in fewer fights meant fewer swaps. Fewer swaps, apparently meant his time-connection waned a bit. He had to start telling Darcy when it was as they passed from one to another. Those split-seconds when both of them were together, no bodies, just them, were some of his best moments. As much as he loved Bucky, he loved Darcy too. And from a few things said, followed by guilty looks, he thought Bucky loved her too. It’d be perfect except the best case scenario had them handling a seventy-year age gap. No gorgeous young woman like her would want a pair of hundred-year-old wrinkly, senile queers.

He enjoyed what she showed him, but as he studied and watched the news-reels and practiced her ways of fighting with Bucky when he was home, he thought he was never going to live to see the ‘old’ television shows they watched, the one about the three lady detectives, or the one with the talking car, let alone the newer show they both loved, Firefly, get its mandatory second season, because there was no justice in the world if there was no revival of Firefly.

Bucky did his best to help him, but the time he had seemed to dwindle by the day. Between trips down to Jersey to train with a rifle, and working extra hours at the docks and the mechanic’s shop, Bucky often came home so tired Steve had to help him change out of sweaty work clothes. Steve saved all the extra he could, to help pay for Bucky’s trips, and he knew the trainers at Lehigh did the same to send him home, but the weeks he took off were wearing the budget down. If it weren’t for Darcy’s tricks to make food go farther, last longer in the body, or her occasional co-piloting, as she called it, to help him make repairs he would have had to pay for, they wouldn’t have made it.

It was almost a relief when the radio interrupted its broadcast to tell him Pearl Harbor was gone and they were at War.

<^>

Bucky was at Lehigh when he found out. General quarters were sounded, soldiers rushed to stations, like any other drill. Only Bucky wasn’t a soldier. So he went to the Officer’s Hall. It was a ghost town. He sat and waited for the news he knew was coming. Drill Sergeant Duffy was the first to return, wiping his hand over his face. “Barnes, thank God.” The man sat hard in the chair beside him. “You hear?”

“The quarters, yeah, I heard ‘em. ‘S why I came here.”

“Barnes, it happened, we’re at war.”

“Who with?” He knew, he just… knew he shouldn’t know.

“Japan. Italy, Germany, the whole goddamn world is getting in on this. Again. Christ’s blood, wasn’t the first one enough?”

“World War Two. Huh, sounds like a horror movie sequel. War is back, and this time, it’s personal. You know?”

“Hah, Barnes, you got a soldier’s humor all right. Almost like you already served.”

“In the streets and alleys of Brooklyn, I did. In the Steve Rogers Campaign to End Assholes. Guy woulda been flattened, weren’t for me and Darcy.”

“Darcy?”

“She’s... kinda Steve’s girl. Sassy, classy, and scary as all hell. She’s part of why I come out here to train with you.”

“Yeah, you live with Rogers, right? Good of you to give him time with his gal.” Duffy sighed. “You gonna enlist? We could use you, the shot you are, we could skip you up a rank or two.”

“Not yet,” Bucky said. “I will, I just… I have…. Well I got some things I need to get sorted out before then. I got until Sunday to be here, you want me to take your better riflemen out for extra training before you ship ‘em?”

“Yeah. I hear you, if you have Death on your dance card you wanna get your affairs together first. Be proud to have you when you join, Barnes. And yeah, I’ll give you Dunlap, Robertson, Hulme, and Pavlichenko, they’re all loaners with not much to do until Monday anyhow.” He stood and walked out, and Bucky followed him. The four were called over and Duffy introduced them.

“Barnes, that’s Dunlap, on loan from the Marines, Robertson, loaner from the Navy, Hulme, Army Air Corps, and Pavlichenko, Russia. You lot, this is Barnes, from now until he leaves Sunday night, he is God to you all, you do as he says when he says it and you don’t ask why. If you pay attention, you might learn something.”

Bucky looked them over, two blonde men, one a little stocky the other like a stork both in borrowed Army fatigues, a smiling brunette man in Marine training gear, and a stern woman about the size and shape of Darcy with raven-wing black hair. He could tell she was daring him to say something.

“Let’s go. There’s some trees that make good nests over that way,” he said.

In the trees he timed their assent to the perches they chose. He smiled at Dunlap and Pavlichenko’s choices, he’d used those trees too. Hulme picked well, but his assent-time was slow. Robertson made it up fastest but that put him in a hard spot to shoot from.

“Alphabetically, then, your target is on the range a thousand yards out, hope you brought your scopes. You can come down if you hit it. Dunlap. First shot.”

The rifle report sounded followed by a muffled “dammit” a second later.

“Hulme, your turn.” The rifle went off as a gust passed the range and Bucky saw the puff of dirt. “Pavlichenko---” 

She was already firing. He saw the neat hole in the target’s ‘head’ as he heard her drop twenty feet from her perch.

“Is this acceptable, Drill Sergeant?” she asked in a heavily accented voice.

“Acceptable? Private, tell me you did not just ask me that. A headshot at a thousand yards, what kind of rifle do you use?”

“Any. I like Tokarev’s work best, but, you use what you get, da?”

“You obviously should not be here,” he said somewhat awed.

“Sir, I joined the army when women were not yet accepted, Sir. I have  _ earned _ this."

“Not what I meant, Pavlichenko,” he said quickly. “You shouldn't be training with grunts, you should be over there, taking pot-shots at Nazis.”

“I was,” she said with a feral grin. “I have killed 309 fascist occupants. Then I took a mortar shell to the face and they decided I can serve my country here, getting lazy Americans interested in fighting with us.”

“Good Lord,” Bucky laughed with delight. “I  _ like  _ you, Pavlichenko. We’re doing math later, until then, you may do whatever pleases you. Robertson!”

Robertson’s shot, as predictable, hit a tree. Bucky called up the formulas they needed to use and weren’t, and ran them through again. Dunlap dropped down on the second run.

“Good. What rifle do you use?”

“Johnson’s Betsy, Sir, she’s a good hit. Bayonet is shit and there are some issues stripping her, but if it’s modified, you’re really cooking with gas. Sir.” Bucky smiled at the enthusiastic kid. God, he was only a few years younger than Bucky, a few inches taller and a good fifty pounds heavier than Steve, and here Bucky was thinking he was a kid. He’d been joking when he told Duffy he served, but it felt like he had.

“Good job, Private, sit with Pavlichenko. Hulme!”

They did that until even Robertson hit the target, then Bucky had them do trigonometry. Dunlap was pretty good, and it turned out, the kid was still in college, Mathematics minor. Bucky moved him to help Hulme with the problems he was having. He shifted Pavlichenko to helping Robertson with more complex calculations involving moving targets. They stayed in the woods until he was happy with their math, then he gave them a challenge. He pulled out five tubes loaded with paint in a fragile shell, some people used them for marking targets, Bucky just saved the ones given to him at the armory out of habit.

“These are paint blow darts, you put the open end to your mouth, exhale hard and the paint pops out and tags what you aimed at. Useless over the distances I shoot at but good for training. You have all weekend to try to tag me. Whoever can, without me tagging them, gets a favor. From Drill Sergeant Duffy, who owes me big. You may start planning your moves at dinner, when I tell him I’m wagering his markers. Pavlichenko, you can have first pick.”

“I do not want special treatment, Sir, I am a soldier.”

“You’re a fucking vengeful war goddess with a gun, own that. You get first pick of color because you hit the target first. The others would have gotten that if they were in your place, except they weren't.”

“Oh, I want red.”

“Dunlap, your choice.”

“Yellow, Sir.”

“Hulme?”

“Green.”

“Robertson?”

“White.”

“Guess that means after you fire, you should check for blue paint. Mess, bed, we drill again in the morning.”

“Sir, yes, Sir!”

He drilled them, but he also had them drill each other. Lyudmilla, their Russian ‘curiosity’ taught cover and nest choices and how to identify natural dangers in nests. She also taught them the basics of Russian in the form of drinking songs. Dunlap got them all on a higher level of mathematics, discussing physics like it was a toy. Hulme was silent and almost impossible to see when he was sent out into the woods, and he showed them how to match movement and sound to the surroundings. Robertson showed them tree-leaping, to get from one nest to another quickly. 

By Sunday, Duffy owed favors to Pavchenko and Hulme, and Bucky owed Dunlap a favor for the diagrams on how to modify a M1941 Johnson rifle, since Bucky was still using his Dad’s old Springfield. Robertson was getting better, and just happy he could now beat the Navy’s internal distance shooting record. 

Bucky got on the train and went home, knowing everything was going to change soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Psychic Sock: from the tradition of haning a sock on the doorknob to indicate to your roommate you are having intimate relations and they should not enter.  
> Stripping a rifle: disassembling a gun to clean it, also called field-stripping.  
> Cooking with gas: doing really well, having things go right, similar to 'golden'.  
> Markers: an IOU, for cash or a favor yet to be paid.  
> Mess: short for mess-hall, the place food is served on a military base.
> 
> Notes:  
> Skybars are chocolate bars divided into four sections with four different centers which are caramel, vanilla, peanut and fudge covered in milk chocolate. Big Cherry is a mound of milk chocolate sprinkled with peanuts that contains a whole cherry in a rich creamy center. 
> 
> Skybars are chocolate bars divided into four sections with four different centers which are caramel, vanilla, peanut and fudge covered in milk chocolate. Big Cherry is a mound of milk chocolate sprinkled with peanuts that contains a whole cherry in a rich creamy center. 
> 
> Sun Tzu is the author of The Art of War, a classic book on battle strategy that is very Taoist, and as a result has much advice on accepting the strength of your opponent, locating his weakness, then tricking him into giving you an opening. It's judo for armies.
> 
> The three TV shows are in order, Charlie's Angels, Knight Rider, and Firefly. Steve is a big-time Browncoat.
> 
> General quarters are technically an announcement made aboard a naval warship to signal the all hands aboard a ship to battle stations as quickly as possible. On land, especially in non-Naval military bases, it means a base-wide call to report to your commanding officer, sometimes as a drill to time the response, but also when a war is being announced to previously enlisted personnel.
> 
> A dance card is a schedule of when a woman is dancing what and with whom at a dance. Having Death on your dance card means you have a ticking clock on dying or killing, similar to the phrase "a date with Death".
> 
> Dunlap, Robertson, Hulme, and Pavlichenko are all real snipers, although only Dunlap and Pavilchenko served in WWII, and Robertson and Hulme were not American. Dunlap is famous for using a modified M1941 Johnson, the same as Bucky uses in the movie, and he fought at Iwo Jima and when he enlisted while still at college (Mathematics minor) he was five feet six inches tall, weighing 148 pounds. Lyudmila Mikhailovna Pavlichenko was a Ukrainian Soviet sniper with 309 credited kills, still regarded as one of the top military snipers of all time and the most successful female sniper in history. Her line about joining the army is a quote. I messed with their timelines a bit to give them cameos, since Lyudmila wasn’t hit with the mortar until June 1942 and this takes place in December of 1941.
> 
> Tokarev was a real-life Russian Howard Stark, minus the millionaire playboy bit. He designed several rifles and side arms including the SVT-40, which Pavilchenko used in her work as a sniper.
> 
> Johnson's Betsy was the common name of the M1941 Johnson, which was rejected for mass military armament because of the faulty bayonet and the small parts that tended to get lost when cleaning the gun. Despite that, every soldier on record who used one in WWII credited the gun with saving lives.


	8. Stepping Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy graduates and celebrates the holidays before going back to school.
> 
> Steve gets his first 4F and some much needed reassurance from Bucky.
> 
> Bucky makes a point at work, then at home, and would like the world to please get sane.

Darcy tested into her third degree black belt on her 22nd birthday, and then graduated early, December 2008, despite warnings that it usually took longer. Before she went to the big cattle pen waiting area, she hauled Steve through the link, tired and grumpy though he was. His presence in her head helped keep her from fainting of nerves as she waited with the other graduates in a big, polyester clad herd. He did perk up when she was immediately invited to get a Master’s Degree by the Dean of Political Science. He was fascinated by how she melded her History Major into the applications of modern study, apparently. Darcy thought about it. The last time she’d gotten Steve’s date was in November of 41.

_ I shouldn’t, you need me, _ she thought as the dean waxed poetic about her future career in government, although obviously journalism, law, business and teaching remained viable options.

_ You said the day a man chose your outfit was the day the mortician put you in a box,  _ Steve thought at her.  _ Why would you let a dumb Joe like me decide something as important as your life’s goals? You should do what you want to do. _

“Yeah, I’d love to,” she said, and before the graduation parties ended, she’d signed up to be in the Master’s program, Political Science. She started the next semester, only spending Winter Break at home. Technically, at Grandma Bahrenburg’s home. She wanted to do more reading in the journals, and she could feel Steve’s rising tension when she asked him to go with her to movies or restaurants. War was upon him, and that meant swapping. 

Christmas passed without much fuss, and Chanukah had happened while she was cramming for five classes, so she opened her presents from her Dad’s side all at once, although it wasn’t like she hadn’t gotten a care package of Gelt and gift cards to coffee places from her uncles and her Aunt Leora every day of the holiday. The big stuff though, she opened at a dinner with all the family her Mom could tetris into the house. The nicest was probably the beautiful silver domed locket with a magen David hand painted inside, the most practical was the taser and a gift card for lessons in how to use it from a woman near Culver. What really got to her though, was the book. A Shield for Those Who Walk in Integrity, a Study of Captain America by a German Jew, by Ezra Loewy. The cover was the iconic circular shield, but the star had six points. Darcy nearly burst into tears hugging it, and her Uncle Joseph had no idea why his gift was hitting her like that. Later she buried her head in his shoulder on the sofa and told him she loved it. He held her and let her cry.

“God can’t be everywhere, and neither can mothers; that’s why we have uncles,” he said when she apologized.

<^>

Steve had just gotten his first 4F, the Monday after Bucky came home in the middle of the night. He was cranky, hungry, and running on four hours of sleep and two cups of coffee. He was inclined to turn down the co-piloting offer when he saw a glimpse of Darcy in a mirror, wearing the cap and gown of a graduate. He calmed her nerves, told her funny stories, made comments on the speakers, and then just watched from her eyes as she walked across the stage, took her diploma, fist pumped, and rejoined her family.

It was hard not saying ‘stay with me’ or ‘I’m scared’ or ‘I need you’ to her. But he knew she needed to have a life after the swaps, and the guy was talking some good jobs, government stuff. Darcy could change the world in her own right, not just saving him until he did his thing, whatever it was. He saw her off to home and eased off the connection.

Bucky came home and Steve showed him the 4F. Bucky read the list of reasons, tossed it in the fire of the stove and kissed him. They made love that night, hard and rough, Steve egging Bucky on. Gasping for breath as Steve smiled at him, Bucky looked up. “Nobody who can take a pounding like that and look so smug is a fucking 4F.”

“Well, you’re the one who was fucking a 4F. Besides, all that breathing practice from my asthma has made my respiratory endurance better than yours.”

“That sounds like a Darce thing.”

“I may’a read a biology book to evade Candi-with-an-i. Vile woman, I was so happy when Darcy got moved to a different dormitory. Her last roommate was fantastic. A real sweetheart. And she sounded just like Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind. Only not a scheming, khaki-whacky racist. I’ll miss her.”

“Darcy graduate?”

“Yeah, I did a ride-along with her for it. She’s gonna get a Master’s Degree in Political Science.”

“Wouldn’t that make it a Mistress’s Degree?” Bucky asked. “Since Darce is a dame and all.”

“Guess not everything gets fixed in seventy years,” Steve said with a shrug. “But that just means she has something to fix when she gets out.”

“It was a high hope anyhow. How’re you gonna handle the swaps?”

“Same as always, I guess. I didn’t get in.”

“Yeah, right, pull my other leg buddy, it has bells on it,” Bucky scoffed. “Steve, you  _ never  _ give up. You do what you think is right even when it’s gonna get ya killed. Hence Darcy. Just promise you’ll be smart about this?”

“I can try.”

“At least ask Darcy if she can give you a clue, please, you might not need to go to the front, you might need to do something right here.”

“Look at my life, Buck,” Steve said with an eye roll. “When has there ever been a bully I didn’t go try to smack? Especially the big ones? And there is no bigger bully on the planet right now than the Axis Powers. I know where I need to be. You too.”

“Me?”

“The end of the line somewhere over an ocean? Yeah you too, Jerk, who else will keep my scrawny ass alive?”

“There is that. And I hear Europe gets kinda chilly at night.”

“Maybe we should run some drills on what to do ‘bout that?”

“I like the way you think, Punk.”

<^>

Bucky had crawled out of bed at dawn to go to the docks for morning shift. He helped shift the heavy loads and listened to the talk about the War. A lot of the guys didn’t like it. Most of them were guys he didn’t really know too well, but one… one he did.

“Yo, Wilson, lend a hand over here, the bastards loaded this wrong,” he called from under a box. Zeke Wilson slipped in under to help, but when he was there, Bucky grabbed his shirt.

“Hey, what’s the problem, Barnes?”

“It ain’t just Jews, Zeke. It’s negroes, and Rroma and just about anybody who ain’t Aryan. It’s  _ you. _ Now, I can’t go just yet, I gotta get it settled proper at home, but I’m going. I’m gonna go, and I’m gonna shoot some dumbass German boys who got caught in this mess straight dead while they try their damnedest to shoot me straight dead. And I’m gonna do it, because it don’t matter if the people gettin’ hurt look like me, or pray like me, because they still bleed. Just. Like. Me.”

“And you’re telling me this why? I can’t even fight in the same unit with you Barnes, I can’t piss in the same damn bathroom.”

“Someday Zeke, you will. Or if you don’t see it, hey, your brother’s got a girl, you could have a nephew or a niece that will. That’ll be able to fight, eat, live right next to my nieces and nephews, and maybe even get married someday, if they wanna. The Barnes-Wilsons, or maybe the Wilson-Barnes’s. Guys like you are gonna be teachers, and lawyers and the goddamn President.” Bucky sighed. “But not if we lose. So shut your pie-hole about not caring if some Jews you ain’t met get lead poisoning.”

“Since when are you a fortune teller, Barnes?” Zeke asked, but his fingers were twitching in a tell Bucky knew from card games and after work beers. He was nervous, which meant he believed, at least a little. He wanted to, anyway.

“Since I met a lady who sees the future clear as if it were happening around her, and she slugged back too much booze. When she was drunk she wasn’t as worried about messing shit up and butterflies,” Bucky explained. He smiled, thinking of the night he held Darcy through the effects of the micky and how she’d told him things even Steve hadn’t known, whispering drunkenly in his ear. “I’m telling ya, she promised, swore on her own blood, negro President, 2008. You’ll be ninety. But that’s all based on winning the goddamn war.” 

“You made your point, now can I go?” Zeke said.

“No, I need you to push, I wasn’t lying about this crate bein’ loaded wrong.”

At home, after work, Steve handed him the 4F. He looked at the list of health problems in neat, orderly typeface. Asthma. Scarlet fever. Rheumatic fever. Epilepsy. Scoliosis. Sinusitis. Chronic or frequent colds. High blood pressure. Palpitations or pounding in heart. Easy fatigability. Heart trouble. Nervous trouble of any sort. Has had household contact with tuberculosis patient/s. Parent/Sibling with diabetes, cancer, or stroke. Half that shit could have been left off if Steve lied. Of course he wouldn't lie about that.

None of it changed the fact his punk was the toughest thing on two legs this side of the Atlantic, how’d the doctor think he was still standing? When a list of diseases as long as your arm tries to kill ya, and you’re still standing and they don’t win, you gotta assume there’s some kind of special there. 

He tossed the 4F in the wood burning stove and grabbed Steve. He didn’t make it gentle or kind, he made it brutal, and Steve was right there with him, taunting him to push harder, be rougher. He knew what Steve needed from this. He needed to know that he might be a walking disaster health-wise, but he was a brick shit-house when it came to taking physical force with a grin. He reassured him on that point, they talked, had another round of the softer things Bucky preferred, and fell asleep. 

In the middle of the night Bucky woke from a dream about rain and mud and monsters to look at Steve, and then adjust him so he wasn’t snoring, before going back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Joe: a man.  
> Gelt: chocolate coins given during Chanukah.  
> Magen David: also called the Star of David.  
> 4F: the card declaring you physically or mentally unfit for active service, also used about the person declared unfit.  
> Khaki-wacky: boy-crazy.  
> Rroma: an ethnic group in Europe that were targeted by the Nazis.  
> Pie-hole: mouth.  
> Lead poisoning: shot to death.  
> Brick shit-house: very tough and durable.
> 
> Notes:  
> Darcy's family celebrates Chanukah because her Dad is Jewish. Darcy identifies culturally as Jewish, but not religiously, although her Dad's side of the family will still treat her as a good Jewish girl and spoil her with gifts when they can.
> 
> A Shield to Those Who Walk in Integrity is a line taken from Proverbs, but is taught alongside the Torah in modern Judaic learning. The book is fictional, but many a meta has been done on the fact that the Shield of David was a star, and Steve uses a shield and Stan Lee, who saved the character and changed the shield to the round one with the single star, was Jewish.
> 
> "God cannot be everywhere; that's why He made mothers" is a common Jewish saying.
> 
> Wood burning stoves were still in use in poorer areas of New York City in the early forties.
> 
> Many asthmatics practice breath control as a way of handling an attack if they can't get to an inhaler. These exercises are the same that endurance athletes use to improve their lung stamina.
> 
> Despite the general patriotic fervor, many men in America did not want to fight on the European front, because only Japan had attacked the US. Antisemitism was pretty bad, and many of the ones resistant to fight in Europe sited not caring about Jews.
> 
> Segregation laws meant a black soldier could not fight in a white unit and vice versa. They also limited where African Americans could eat, shop, drink from water fountains and yes, pee. The laws about marrying cross-racially were Anti-miscegenation laws. Both sets were in effect in 1941.


	9. No, You Move

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy deals with graduate school stress and Steve trying to enlist.
> 
> Steve learns some things he never knew about Darcy, as does someone else.
> 
> Bucky wants his loves safe, and if he has to sign up, he will.

Darcy made it halfway through her first semester as a graduate before Steve needed her for another fight. She kicked ass promptly, then went back into the theater they had both come from. She checked her ticket stub to find what he was watching, scanned the room for Bucky and settled into a seat in the back row when she didn’t see him. A newsreel was playing, the beginnings of the war. She remembered this one from her Bachelor’s. They swapped back as a cartoon began playing.

Darcy found the right newsreel clip on youtube, added it to Steve’s playlist, called up a swap so he could listen in and went back to studying.

Graduate school was harder, the class load more taxing, even though she wasn’t rushing it like she had before, only four classes her first semester. She knew she was going to have to stop in the middle anyway. She also tried to balance that with making sure Steve and Bucky were alright. She didn’t sleep more than a few hours every night, four and a half was a good night, and she felt herself slipping into Graduate Fog, that repetitive, mindless circle of study, eat, nap, study, class, repeat. That way led madness, according to all her sources.

She brought the issue to the professor she connected with most. The main problem was that nothing felt at all new or different, just a grind with no light at the end of the tunnel. Dr. Gunnarsdottir suggested she take a chance at a scholarship program to go out to an isolated community to study the political structures for a week. She cleared it with all of Darcy’s other teachers except Dr. Skivorski who was frankly evil and assigned her extra work to do on her “sabbatical”. Darcy picked a Hassidic Shtetl to go to, mostly Russian immigrants who distrusted tech to an almost Amish degree… so that rusty Yiddish of hers was going to have to get better, or she was going to have to pick up another language.

Her week began well, the calmness of small labor reducing her stress. While the community at large didn’t have any actual rules about her laptop or cell phone, the placement agreement meant she spent most of her time in a small shop run by a deeply traditional family who preferred she keep tech in her bag, and use it in private. Getting an excuse not to look at her email except during her small window of tech time actually helped her relax. It also helped that there was a bittersweetness to working in a place that felt like a slice of Steve’s time.

That changed when she swapped, suddenly going from getting a half-nap to getting the strong arm from an MP in a recruitment office. He was using the classic bully move of bracing his hand on her shoulder and holding her back from hitting him. Just as well, she needed to let off steam and that could be dangerous on the torso, it required control her sleep-deprived mind didn’t have. If she was so tired she wasn’t sensing the swaps coming, she was too tired to control how badly either of their bodies got hurt in a grapple.

“Pally, you are never gonna convince the doc here you can be more than cannon fodder. Do yourself a favor, take your 4F and go home before you get hurt.”

“I’m not the one who’s gonna have a dislocated elbow in a bit,” Darcy snarled at him and slammed both hands clasped together down on his right elbow joint in the wrong direction. There was a sickening crunch, and the arm was yanked away in a yowl loud enough it got everyone’s attention, and whoah-howdy, that was a  _ lot _ of half-naked men. Unfortunately, Darcy’s mouth was still set to snark. “Anyone else want a go? Anybody want to trade me for my 4F? We got any Jodies in here want an excuse to stay at home? I’ll take you all on, you asswipe dickbrains.” She looked at the injured MP. “Reset that, ice it and immobilize it, and maybe you won’t be called Lefty forever.”

“Do you have medical training, Mr. Rogers?” the doctor asked.

“Only fixing what I got hurt, my neighborhood’s not a great place for a guy what doesn’t like bullies,” she told him honestly of Steve.

“Do you get injured a lot, Mr. Rogers?”

“Less than the bullies do, I can tell ya that.”

“I was unaware Providence had such a rough side. And if you don’t mind me saying so, your Brooklyn is showing. It’s illegal to lie on an enlistment form.”

Oh. Crap. Steve had tried five times to get in, he had to have lied on those forms. Somehow that had gotten left out of the story of five tries, and she hadn’t put it together until now.

She was in Rhode Island. Not good. 

The MP drew his side-arm with a shaky left hand and Darcy decided booking it was the better part of staying alive. She scooped up Steve’s stuff and bolted out the back. 

_ Ah, an alley full of trash, home turf,  _ she thought.

Knocking a can over she snagged the lid and tossed it Frisbee style at the gun. She missed, but it distracted him long enough for her to slip Steve’s shoes back on. She could dress and run, a unique skill brought on by one too many 6 am classes in undergrad.

Out of the alley, she caught her breath, cursed the late invention of the inhaler, and walked towards a café.

“You got a phone in here, Mister?” she asked the host.

“Yes, are you quite all right, you don’t seem the thing,” asked the Brit as he showed her the phone. Rotary. Fan-fucking-tastic. She didn’t know the code for out of state to the apartment. She dialed 0.

“Suffolk county phone operator, how may I direct your call?” said a tired sounding woman.

“Oh thank god I’m not in Rhode Island,” Darcy blurted. “Um, I need the Barnes-Rogers residence, maybe the Rogers-Barnes. Um guy named James Barnes, you got a listing? It’s in Brooklyn.”

“Kid, it is the end of my damn shift, and everybody in Brooklyn knows James B. Barnes ain’t gonna be back in state till late.”

“Oh. Um, this is Steve… Rogers, um, I wound up out here and I don’t know how and I need to get home, and frankly Mrs., what’s your name?”

“Robertson, Rose Robertson, and its Miss.”

“Well frankly Miss Rose I could use a hand, I’m scared.”

“Never thought I would live to hear that admission. I’m off in two, I’ll swing by and get ya.”

“Thanks Rose, you are a life saver. True hero.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah… you’ll forget that soon enough.”

Rose pulled up a few minutes later, Darcy finished explaining the difficulty the Brit ex-pat was having buying underwear, and ran out to meet a formidable woman with a scowl and cat’s eye glasses. “Hiya Rose, thanks a million for this. I don’t know what I’m doing out here.”

“Getting another 4F, probably, you look like you’re collecting them,” the woman said with a deepening of her scowl. “What’s this, three?”

“Maybe. Less than five?”

“You are a piece of work Rogers; you fight like you got somebody you gotta prove something to. Everybody knows you can handle yourself in a fight, least at home. Who you tryin’ to impress, a girl? No girl is worth that Steve.”

“Maybe I just want more than home to know I can do something, that I’m more than just plain old D-  _ Steve _ .” Dacry caught herself, but she was tired, and fed up, and she hadn’t been honest with anyone, least of all herself, about how much this whole thing sucked. She didn’t know Rose, but she needed to talk, and talk she did, even if she couched it in a way that protected her secret… and Steve’s. “Maybe I know a thing or two about women and I know none I’d want would be impressed by this macho bull, maybe I want things for my sake, huh? You ever thought maybe a guy like me might have more in common with a woman like you than he does with the lunks?”

“Steve, I’m a woman, it’s totally different.”

“You telling me you never once thought to yourself, I’m gonna have to be two times better to be thought half as good as the able-bodied man, but fortunately this isn’t that difficult? That you never got fed up with everyone just expecting the work you do to be done and never once thanking you for it or recognizing that it was  _ work _ , because they looked and refused to see? That you never had door after door after  _ fucking  _ **_goddamn_ ** door slammed in your face? That you never had to look in a mirror and remind yourself you deserve more than the scraps so you wouldn’t just curl up and quit?”

“I… Steve….”

“No, I get it. I’m a guy, a scrappy little shrimp of one, but you’ll never see anything more than that. Privilege doesn’t end at the inseam, Rose. But it’s not your fault.’

“I have thought all that. And then I did curl up and quit. I work at the damn phone company.”

“Rose, you’re a fucking  _ telecommunications officer _ . You control all calls, and how long they wait and how secure the line is and whether or not some abusive jerk actually gets connected to the girl who ran away from him.  _ You _ have  **power** . Now, you have to ask, how are you going to use it?”

They drove in silence and Rose dropped Darcy off. Inside she checked the slow-cook, added a pinch of the spices that Mrs. Wu gave Bucky every time he got noodles, and sat down to fill Steve in.

<^>

Steve woke up sure he’d lost it this time. Darcy’s body had been napping on a shop counter and stool that both looked like something from his time. Trying to get his bearings, he tripped and knocked into a shelf of scarves. Unlike his previous ride-alongs when Darcy went shopping, it was wood, not plastic and kind of rickety.

He had stabilized it when a woman asked him something in a language he didn’t know.

“Uhhh….”

She said it more slowly.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying. Do you maybe speak English?”

She said something angry that sounded like Russian, then in a heavy accent, she told him off in English.

“Neora Lewis, what are you doing? You bend over like that where any passing boy could see, you still do not wear your stockings right, and now you refuse to speak Yiddish? And what do you mean, do I speak English? You know very well I speak the best English here.”

“I… Yiddish? I didn’t….” Oh dear lord. He sat down hard on the floor as if he’d been hit. Was Darcy Jewish? Was that why she wouldn’t talk with him about the War? Did her family… did nice Mrs. Bahrenburg get put in… no, no, no. “I need to call home, I need to talk to my grandmother. Where’s my phone?”

“Neora! You know we don’t allow cellular phones here. What has gotten into you? The truth, Neora. I will know if you lie to me.”

Steve looked up from the floor. “I’m not her,” he whimpered. “She took my place to save me, and I didn’t know she was, oh god, her grandma’s what, sixteen when it starts? I didn’t know… Oh God, Darcy…. Forgive me Darcy, I didn’t know.” He started to hyperventilate and strong arms held him.

“Devochka, what is your name, and why would the Lord send Neora to save you?”

“I’m Steve, Steven. I guess I’m important in the future, mine I mean, it would be your past. She’s been saving my life since we were sixteen. The war has just started, we’re only a year in, I keep trying… but I’m not sure I can do what she needs, I get told I can’t a lot. I’m kind of a runt.”

“Steve is a strong name. A big name with big boots to fill. It is the David of the Goyim. And as we wear the magen David, the shield and star of David, another man named Steve carried a shield and star.” She undid a clasp around Darcy’s neck and showed him a domed locket Darcy had worn before but he had never seen inside, because what if it was her fella? He’d have felt like a dope. She opened it to the most beautiful six pointed star he’d ever seen in blue and silver painted inside. “Davids have been small before. That does not mean they do not win. I think a small Steve might be just as strong as a small David. But you must always try. If you do not, the giant wins, the enemy destroys your homelands, kills your friends and family. So you stand up, say “I will do this” and then you do it, even if it is hard. You think you get told no a lot, you try being a Jew!”

“Thank you. I think I feel the swap coming, Darcy will be back soon. But thank you.”

“If you are who I believe, it is I who should thank you. Good-bye, Steven, Ki Malachav Yetzaveh Lach Lishmorcha Bechol Deracheicha.”

He swapped back into his own apartment with a note.

_ Steve, _

_ You are a reckless asshole. Never change, but next time give a girl a little warning when you strand her half naked in Suffolk county with a falsified enlistment form. I thought I was in Rhode Island! Oh, and you be _ really  _ super nice to Rose Roberts, she saved me tonight. _

_ Darcy _

_ P.S. Your lucky number is five. I shouldn’t say that, but maybe you’ll handle number four without me if you know, and I don’t need to see that many men in nothing but boxers and socks again. _

<^>

Bucky got home late, Steve reading a note in his Darcy book. “What’s up, Stevie?”

“Buck, Darcy… she’s a Jew. Speaks Yiddish and everything. She was at some recreation place or something, and everybody spoke Yiddish, and I didn’t, and I blew my cover because I didn’t know what to do. But it’s…" Steve shook himself. "Bucky it’s Darcy I’m fighting for. For her family, maybe her life, because if her family dies, even one grandparent, before the war is over Darcy could stop existing. I have got to help them. We have got to help them. Because don’t even try to tell me you aren’t just as in love with her as I am.”

“Ok, I’ll give notice tomorrow and sign up for a government ride to Lehigh day after that. For Darcy. If it weren’t for the time….”

“I know, me too. Maybe we’ll all wind up in the afterlife together?”

“Maybe you and I just focus on staying alive to see her face to face. Get some sleep Punk,” he told Steve with a kiss.

“You too, Jerk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Shtetl: a Jewish enclave community that may or may not be within a larger city or it's own town.  
> Yiddish: a language spoken by many Jews of Eastern European decent.  
> MP: Military Police.  
> Pally: friend, in a sarcastic way.  
> Cannon fodder: one who's only purpose in war is to draw fire and die, and insult (think the red-shirted-Ensign trope)  
> Jodies: a well bodied man who avoids active service, a heavy insult in the army, the implication being they are cowards.  
> The thing: a Brit-ism meaning good health, to not be the thing is to be unwell.  
> Ex-pat: someone originally from another country.  
> Lunks: stupid muscular men.  
> Slow-cook: a food cooked over time on a low heat. The early version of a crock-pot meal.  
> Devochka (Russian): girl child, affectionate.  
> Goyim: (Yiddish) non-Jews.
> 
> Notes:  
> Graduate schools vary from major to major in course requirements, but from what I found Political Science tends to have a lower number of classes, but from the drop-rates, harder ones. Darcy thinks of four as a low number because she was taking five to six classes in undergrad to graduate early. Graduate Fog is a real and present threat and a good teacher will note it and try to help the student who has it, a bad teacher will only make things worse.
> 
> Hassidic Jews are a more traditional branch, and while I do not know of any Hassidic Shtetls that have tech prohibitions, the number of Hassidic Jews I know who do not want to carry cell phones makes me feel this is a believable scenario.
> 
> The arm-lock described here is easy to break in this way if you don't care about collateral. That MP may never use his right arm again.
> 
> In Britain, "pants" refers to underpants, and "trousers" to the outer garment. In America both refer to the outer one. While modern Brits would not be hard pressed to identify this miscommunication, the lack of cultural cross contamination and the total absence of the internet make it more likely an issue for a Brit in America in the 1940's.
> 
> Telephone operators really did have all those capabilities, as well as being able to listen in on lines they relayed. Respect the one who controls the tech, she can end you.
> 
> Darcy is called Neora, because Darcy is not a Hebrew name. She would have gotten a second, Hebrew, name for use in the rites and celebrations, and uses it when living with traditionalists. As a side note, the name Darcy means "dark one" and Neora means "light".
> 
> The David referenced is the one of Goliath fame and also many other acts, he did a LOT. The magen David was said to be the sign of God's will shielding him.
> 
> Ki Malachav Yetzaveh Lach Lishmorcha Bechol Deracheicha is the Traveler's Prayer, a part of one of King David's Psalms. It means "For He shall command His angels for you, to guard you on all your paths."


	10. The Future

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy deals with Bucky Barnes being unfairly hot, Steve Rogers being a reckless idiot, and losing her life to help save theirs.
> 
> Steve becomes a dancing monkey and is afraid he's lost Darcy forever.
> 
> Bucky is coping with war, being a POW and a new-found (somewhat embarrassing) obsession.

Darcy finished her study peacefully, although many of the older generations started going out of their way, or ordering their grandchildren to go out of their way, to make Darcy’s life easier. When she said goodbye, one woman called her  _ farshteln fun di farshteln _ , shield of the shield.

At school, she worked hard, took an extra credit teaching assistant job in her summer semester, and napped wherever and whenever she could, sometimes while standing in line at the grocery store. She was five weeks and six elective credits away from earning her degree when they hit.

The first one wasn’t so bad, in fact, it felt like an entirely normal swap, only special in hindsight. She was in a pile of trash, normal. There was a big dude about to curb-stomp her, normal. She was pissed, a trifecta of normal. 

She hauled herself up and hefted the lid of a can like the shield, his shield. The guy knocked it out of her hand. Ok, no improvising a weapon you’ve never used, that’s fair. He slugged her and her reflexes were shot enough it hit a little, instead of her dodging entirely.

“I could do this all day,” she growled at him. “But why don’t you play with someone your own size, it’s safer.”

“Scared I’m gonna beat you?” he taunted.

“No,” Bucky said from where he’d stepped up beside the guy. “He’s talkin’ about you. It’s safer for you not to fight him, or did you not know that was Steve Rogers?”

“I don’t care who he- glark.” He cut off as Darcy stuck a pair of stiffened fingers up into his solar plexus. With no air, he faltered and fell when she pulled her hand back.

“He gonna live, or do I need to get a meat-wagon?” Bucky asked her.

“He’ll live. No doubt with a secret but crippling fear of tiny men, but he’ll live. I haven’t had a lethality on me since the gang when I was sixteen. I should not have put that guy’s head through a wall, and I still feel bad about it,” she said sullenly as he guided her out of the alley.

“You had no way of knowing he’d had his head hit seven times that month, come on, we need to get you cleaned up.”

Darcy took in his uniform, and UNF, hot, so hot. And so unfair he was taken AND gay AND going to die in four years.

“Hot date, hot stuff?”

“Yeah, sisters, Bonnie and Connie, from Omaha.”

“Sisters?” Darcy asked, one eyebrow up.

“Yeah, the kind that don’t have much of a family resemblance and move in from out of town and share an apartment. Real class acts.”

“Oh. Yeah, _ that  _ kind of hot date. Gotcha. Where you taking ‘em?”

“You’ll love it; we’re going to the future.” He snapped open the World’s Fair ad in the paper and Darcy laughed.

“I do love it. Just, uh, do not get your hopes up on the concept of flying cars. Clean energy, yes, flying cars… not so much.”

“Will do,” he said as they stepped into the apartment. Darcy felt the tug, and Bucky must have noticed, because he slipped one tiny kiss to her lips. “For luck, Doll.”

She faded back into her seat in Mob Psychology and Propaganda.

“Miss Lewis, if you cannot satisfactorily explain the media manipulation’s effect upon the psychological state of the participants of Kristallnacht in the next minute, you may leave.” 

Darcy left.

The next day brought an apology from Steve as he leapt towards a grenade. After it was determined to be a dummy grenade, Darcy spent most of her study time berating him for an idiot and telling him he was lucky Peggy Carter didn’t slay him where he stood. Only his sharing a memory of using a conversation they’d had about Disney’s Mulan to win a challenge that hadn’t been beat in seventeen years calmed her down.

The day after, there was only pain. 

She knew she was screaming, but she didn’t know if it was in her body or Steve’s. The lines were bleeding, and golden light edged in fragmentary crystal shards was seeping into the edges of her vision as her knees buckled and she fell onto the concrete sidewalk that cut through the quad.

“Shut it down!” she heard. 

“No, I can do it,” Steve screamed. 

Darcy knew he could, he did, and so she opened a door she hadn’t noticed was there. She grit her teeth and tasted blood, but she shunted his pain into her body so he could make it out sane. The golden light was covering her entire field of vision now, with only flashes of clear crystal that gave her glimpses of what was happening to her... to Steve. 

Her world narrowed to one thought: survive. If she could survive, she could help Steve survive. She could help Bucky survive. She could change things. It was a crazy, desperate thought, her Line was meant to preserve the timeline, not change it, but a memory of a phone call and a voice that shouldn’t be there kept pushing the idea. She could defy Time itself and save the people she cared about.

She blacked out. When she woke up, she was in a hospital.

“Miss Lewis, you blew out your larynx from screaming,” said the doctor, a sour look seemingly permanently etched into his face. “For  _ seven hours straight. _ We have you on a sedative, but please use the whiteboard to communicate.”

_ Well, shit. _

She used her time in bed wisely, coaching Steve on talking with his new chorus girl line-up, and soon he was their dorky, adorable little brother who occasionally had really good ideas about cosmetics. She’d like to take credit, but all she did was give him color theory books and a few copies of Seventeen way back when she was a kid, the rest was Steve being a terrific artist, on canvas or face. He did eyeliner like nobody’s business. He was a horrible actor though.

_ Darcy, I need you to swap with me. The director is gonna kill me if I don’t deliver a better speech, and it’s a small audience, really, I promise,  _ he thought to her as they checked her out of ICU and into the normal hospital.

_ You owe me, big-time, Steve. Don’t say a single word in my body. _

She swapped in as he stepped onto the stage. 

He had notes taped to his shield. 

How did this human disaster become the hero of the European Theater? 

She read the notes quickly, and no, dear god no, this was horrible. She knew good propaganda, and this sir, was crap. Instead she looked out at the audience. Little kids, looking like she was Elmo in Sesame Street Live.

“I, uh, I have a speech I’m supposed to give,” she said, and boy was it weird talking again. “But, I don’t think it’s what you want to hear. So, if it’s all right with everyone, I’m just going to sit here on the edge and talk a bit.”

Amanda, the ‘S’ chorus girl hissed “What are you doing?” at her from the wings.

“I want to take a moment to be honest. Honesty is hard, for everyone. We want to hear someone else has it figured out, that we won’t have to fight for things, that we’re safe, that there is a Man With a Plan,” she chuckled, and the kids in the audience joined her. “But the truth is, people, we don’t have it figured out. We know what should be possible, we know we theoretically can win, but that takes  _ stuff. _ It takes bandages and medicine to save our friends’ lives, it takes silk for parachutes to let people braver than me jump out of planes, it takes food and clothing and tents and trucks.”

“What about bullets and guns,” said a little boy. “You always say, every bond you buy is a bullet in the barrel of your best guy’s gun.”

“Those are helpful, yeah, and it sounds neat, but honestly, there’s a guy over there from Scotland, name of Mad Jack, who uses a longbow, and makes his own arrows. Also carries a sword, which is reusable. Guns are handy, but I think I’d want something like what Mad Jack has.” Darcy sighed. “People forget -- because we want to forget -- that it’s the little stuff, the extra socks, the tent with no leak, the truck that hasn’t been fixed on the field so often it’s more baling wire than Jeep, that  _ save _ lives. I’m not interested in killing people, I just really don’t like bullies, and that’s what the Nazi’s are. Bullies.” 

The boy nodded, this was sage wisdom to a kid who still had baby teeth. Heck, it felt like wisdom to Darcy, and she was in her 20’s.

“I have a friend over there, a guy who’s done so much to help me when I couldn’t pay him back. I want him to have warm feet and a dry bed and a way to get to where he’s going. I don’t want to think about him killing. I want to know he’s  _ safe _ . I want  _ him _ to have a Man With a Plan,” she said. “So that’s why I’m going to ask you to buy bonds. They pay for his warm feet and dry bed and hot food, and after all he did making sure I had those when I was your size, I kinda think I owe him one. Whatd’ya say, folks,” she stood up. “Will you help me help him?”

The crowd cheered.

“Alright, alright, thank you. Now you paid for a show, and I know my chorus line is gonna dye my hair with beets if I don’t let ‘em sing, so, I give you, The Star Spangled Singers!” She walked off stage as the song began.

“What was that?” demanded a short fat man in a suit.

“Even a dancing monkey is occasionally, still, in fact, a monkey,” Darcy snarled at him. She pulled the shield off Steve’s arm and shoved it at him. “That, my friend, was emotional honesty. Try it when you rewrite this crap.”

When she swapped out, her throat burned. Gulping tea, she opened a link.  _ Damn it all, Rogers, I told you not to talk. I  _ **just** _ got out of ICU, _ she thought.

_ Sorry, I thought you didn’t want me answering a question wrong again. I didn’t know asking the time would hurt. _

_ You’re an idiot. _

_ Your idiot? _

Darcy sighed.  _ Yeah. My idiot. _

<^>

Steve tried not to call her for a full swap into him too often after that. He felt bad that he’d caused her pain, and worse that he hadn’t known. She’d kept to ride-alongs and co-pilots on his side, and he hadn’t questioned it. The last time he’d been in her body he’d really messed up, panicking at coming through in a history class about something he’d read about in the papers, a messed up and violent night, and he’d gone off on another student for dismissing it. When the teacher demanded he support his position with logic, he hadn’t had any, just anger that anyone could do such things, and he’d left Darcy in the class with a helpless look on his face.

He assumed she didn’t want to swap because of that.

He hadn’t realized she was hurt.

He didn’t know when or how she got hurt.

He was the worst friend possible.

She still nudged at him a few times, though, giving him a few co-pilots where she showed him his next show, and an absolutely horrifying experience watching the movie they had made, but he didn’t call for a swap again until he heard he was going to the front and one of the girls staying behind wanted to say goodbye. Intimately. Which was so gross, she was like a sister. He had no idea how to say that without hurting her, but when he reached to pull Darcy in to help him she wasn’t there. 

Static, like a badly tuned radio. 

It hurt, losing her without being able to say goodbye, without being able to apologize, but maybe he’d done it, the thing she needed of him. Or maybe he was too late and someone who would never know how important they’d been had died too soon. 

He told Shelly he couldn’t stay the night because he’d lost the only girl he loved. It was true enough, and he was in enough pain that she softened her seductive look and petted his hair, reassuring him that everything would be alright in the end. He wasn’t sure that was true, but he had to hope it was.

For Darcy.

<^>

War was Hell, the saying went. But if War was Hell, what was Bucky’s sin that sent him here? He didn’t think it was being queer, despite what people said. And some of the dumb kids he was trying to keep alive hadn’t had enough time to do much mortal sinning, he would swear on his parent’s graves Higgins was fourteen. 

It was worse than Hell, but it didn’t get close to the big tank, the size of a small house, and the energy weapons and mud jamming his Dad’s Springfield. He ordered surrender and then watched his men be worked to death, from a distance, of course. They never let units stay together. He worked alongside men who were not his, tried to comfort them when someone died or was taken for Dr. Zola’s experiments and never came back. In the blackness of the night, he would close his eyes and imagine a beautiful golden light, sunshine and Steve’s smile, and softly sing songs he knew from Darcy. She loved music, and in this place worse than Hell, music was all he had.

Finally, he couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t watch the cruelty and do nothing. It was like Steve’s burning rage and golden heart had gotten under his skin. He knew how his beloved Punk felt, and it was hard to believe anyone could sustain the sheer power of outrage that built under his sternum like a stab wound. 

He got between a skinny black kid from another work gang and a whip, wrapping it around his left arm and gut punching the foreman.

“You’re gonna die now,” the boy said. “Big white idiot. You never hit the middle boss, he has enough power to hurt you but not enough to feel content unless he uses it on someone.”

“You wouldn’t have survived that,” Bucky explained, gesturing at the whip on his arm. “I might survive what they do. Go, you shouldn’t be here.”

“Crazy white boy,” the kid muttered as he hurried off.

After a short fight, Bucky too malnourished and overworked to fight properly, the guards took him away, through the door nobody returned from, and he felt a tingle as they strapped him in.

_ Steve, where the hell are you? How do you go from chorus girls and crappy stage managers to a torture chamber? What year is it? _

“I’m not him, Doll, but I’m glad you’re here. Selfish, but I don’t want to die alone.”

_ You can just think it at me, you know, _ Darcy’s voice said in his head. He’d never heard her talk, but he knew the sweet, sassy female voice was hers.  _ And you don’t die here. From the future, remember? _

_ Oh. It’s 43. When did Steve get chorus girls? _

_ 42, right after becoming a human experiment for the Army. He’s Captain America. _

_ That guy? Oh, God, we all hate that guy. Uh, Darcy, Dollface, you should go, this is probably going to hurt. _

_ I was there when Steve got experimented on, I can take that. The question is, do you want to come away for a while? I can show you the marvels of a psych ward. _

_ You’re in a nut-house?!?  _ Bucky noticed all the inflections were there in his mind-voice.

_ I blew out my voice screaming for no reason when I was partially hooked to Steve during a damn painful Army experiment. Of course I’m in the nut-house,  _ Darcy thought at him.  _ They think I’m nuttier than a jar of Planter’s Party Mix. Wouldn’t you? _

_ I think you and Steve are both reckless loons, but then, I just sacrificed myself for some kid I’d never met, and even he thinks I’m crazy, so maybe I’m not in a place to judge. _ If he could have shrugged he would have, but instead, Bucky noticed the feeling of a shrug passing over the link. It was weird.

_ You are a good man, in a world where that is strange and unusual, of course people think you’re nuts. _ Darcy sighed at him.  _ Thing is, it’s no bad thing to be a nut. When they offered me a bed here, the doctor said ‘It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society’. It’s why I said yes. I think we’re all going to need some help learning to cope with the profoundly sick societies around us, and this is where we get that help. Speaking of sick, who’s the dweeb? He needs a make-over like, five years ago. _

_ That’s Arnim Zola. He does experiments, the subjects don’t come back. _

_ You will,  _ Darcy thought firmly.  _ Now follow me, I’ll show you day time TV, it’s not great, but it is very likely better than the Horror-rama over here. _

Bucky followed her voice in his head as Zola began to ask him questions about his blood, his medical history, other things. To spite the guy, he set his mouth to recite his name, rank and serial number ad-nauseam. 

It was amazing, seeing Darcy’s world for the first time. So bright, and TV, oh, man. Steve had told him it was like a movie theater but in your house. That didn’t come close. The bright colors of the people and the sets… Darcy mentally laughed at him when he wanted to watch the show about price-guessing for an hour, two shows. But the stuff was so colorful, and the prices were bizarrely high, although she did tell him about inflation, and how the minimum wage went up to $7.25 an hour and was actually enforced. He almost cheered when the lady won a new car, but Darcy shoved him back hard enough he caught a glimpse of a needle going into his arm before bouncing back.

_ Sorry _ , she thought to him.  _ My vocals are pretty destroyed and the last time I let Steve have them, I got them back sore and itchy. _

_ It’s fine, Dollface, you told me that they were hurt. I should have had better control of myself. _

_ Shut up and watch your game-shows, Bucky, but after this one I’m switching to Days, they just had a major reveal about Rafe seeing his evil twin making time with Sami. I need to know how that falls out. And no judging me, you watched back to back Price is Right. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Solar plexus: in the same area as the diaphragm, and crucial to getting air properly.  
> Meat-wagon: ambulance.  
> Class acts: really classy people.  
> ICU: intensive care unit.  
> Baling wire: a tough wire often referred to when talking about a hasty repair made with inadequate materials.  
> Psych ward/nut-house: psychological hospital. The patients are the "nuts"  
> Planter's Party Mix: a mix of many types of nut.  
> Dweeb: unattractive gross... you know what, just pretend there's a picture of Zola here.
> 
> Notes:  
> Lesbians or other women in same-sex relationships often moved away from home to a large city and set up as sisters to the public to remain a couple at home. Men in similar situations would arrange double dates with said women, to maintain both covers. So I made Bonnie and Connie a same-sex couple, to maintain the canon of the film and the gay of the fic.
> 
> Kristallnacht was a famous riot/mob action in Germany prior to WWII, prompted by media manipulation, government agents fomenting anger and the general powder-keg that was pre-war Germany.
> 
> Darcy is hospitalized in early November, 2010 which is too early in the semester to be able to just take the tests and get credit for the classes.
> 
> Steve's speech-scene literally makes me cringe because of how badly done the propaganda was. Seriously, if he weren't hot, he'd never have sold bonds. Good propaganda is emotionally honest enough to feel like an individual conversation to every viewer.
> 
> Elmo is a popular muppet character on the TV show Sesame Street. There is also a live stage production and little kids go crazy over it. I still own one of Big Bird's feathers from when I went as a child.
> 
> Mad Jack Churchill was a real soldier, who did indeed snipe using a longbow, the last recorded use of one in war. He also carried a claymore sword and was famous for believing that leadership should simultaneously demoralize and confuse the enemy, whilst also convincing your own troops you are too damn crazy to die. It is unclear how many "Mad Jack" stories are true, as he encouraged tall tales and lying about him.
> 
> Higgins is based on the vast number of underage boys who managed to get to the front lines. Children fought that war too.
> 
> Bucky is shown using a modified M1941 Johnson (the Betsy) in the montage, and a different gun in the cut scene of his capture, but the Betsy did not come out until 1941, and his father probably used a Springfield manufactured rifle as those were standard. I chose to have him use his Dad's gun, but it would have been taken upon capture. Thus the replacement later.
> 
> Separating officers from the troops they command is a great way to produce working groups who won't conspire. However this can backfire if you give them enough reason. See the mix in the cell the Howlies are in, non-unified, but also desegregated and later, very successful.
> 
> Bucky's new favorite show is The Price is Right, a really cheesy game show about guessing the prices of common household goods to win large prizes like cars and living room furniture and trips to the tropics. Darcy's show is Days of Our Lives, a soap opera with lots of convoluted plots like evil twins, people coming back after being presumed dead, and love triangles (wow, it's basically a comic book huh?) See also: telenovella.
> 
> For the record, the author is VERY pro-health care, especially mental health care. The author has in fact BEEN hospitalized and criticism of the doctors doing their best to help Darcy in a situation where they don't have the knowledge needed to even start understanding the problems Will Not Be Tolerated. Sympathy for Darcy and the Boys is acceptable but I will right out delete anyone who acts like the hospital is a torture chamber. I have _actual_ torture for you to be mad at me for.


	11. Hell, and Nearby Regions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy handles a new Swap, fights racism, bad marketing, and trigger-happy Commandos.
> 
> Steve deals with not being Darcy's Swap anymore, until he's dealing with land-mines and leadership.
> 
> Bucky pays attention, notices patterns, sings, and finds out literally nobody worth talking to cares he's queer.

It was weird to swap with someone other than Steve. Bucky didn’t need her to come fight his battles, he just needed to get away from his body, to skip the torture with her accelerated relationship to their time. When Steve came the next day, which had been a month or so, apparently, Darcy went on a ride-along with him. She was worried they wouldn’t find their way out of the facility, it was weirdly laid out and exploding as they escaped, as they faced Johan Schmidt. Even knowing he was called the Red Skull for a reason, having seen the portrait of him, his reveal was disturbing. The way the mask ripped free was less Scooby Doo and more Texas Chainsaw Massacre. She helped Bucky not vomit, and refused to let Steve wallow on his side of the divide.

“Don’t you ever fucking do that to me again, Steve,” she ordered at the first rest stop they took on the march back. “I mean it. I will follow you to hell and back, as I clearly just demonstrated, but if you EVER try to make me leave you there again I am going to tie you in so many knots people will think you’re a pretzel. We’re a fucking team, and we fucking act like it!”

The men stared at her, Bucky’s weak and shaky hands fisted in Steve’s costume. She ignored them.

“I won’t,” Steve promised quietly. Darcy nodded and released him.

“Good. We need to keep moving, we’re still too far behind enemy lines here. Everyone buddy up, we need to stick together. Squads of… five to seven. Watch your squad’s back, keep eyes on them, speak up if they start to fall. We  _ do not  _ leave men behind.”

“You sure we’re all men here?” someone asked with a nasal New England drawl. She whirled on him, about to chew him out for sexism, when she saw he was glaring at Morita.

“Do you even know one fucking thing about him?” she asked, eyes sweeping over a familiar uniform. “Fresno, California, recruited from a fucking prison camp we fucking built. Innocent kids behind barbed wire in the so-called ‘land of the free’. Segregated and distrusted despite being willing to fight and die and  _ kill  _ for a country that holds his family prisoner for the crime of their heritage. That sound kinda  _ familiar _ to you, Private? Locking up  _ little kids _ because they got the wrong ancestors?”

The man broke eye contact and mumbled.

“Jim Morita has more courage and honor in his left nut than you have in your whole body. You treat that man with respect, or so help me, I will shoot you in the foot and leave you here, because while I don’t leave men behind I will  _ gladly _ leave a louse. Am I understood?” Her eyes drilled into him, then dismissed him as unworthy of her time. “What are you morons waiting for? Move out, we have miles to go before we sleep gents, so double time it.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Morita said later.

“The hell I didn’t,” Darcy and Bucky said together. She sent him a mental smile.

She got them back, watched Carter try to flirt with Steve and fail, because Steve was an oblivious little shit who just wanted to tease her.

She blinked back into her hospital room and ate some jello, then got pulled under again. Bucky was with the team, and Darcy had to blink back tears when she saw Dugan, so young and full of life, and mostly just plain alive. They’d leveled a building and Darcy wasn’t sure why she was here, every danger was gone, dead, shuffled forcibly off the mortal coil, an ex-threat. But everyone was staring at a bit of wall with the Hydra symbol on it.

“Alright, that’s wrong, and it really needs to change,” she said after some contemplation. “Anybody got paint?”

“You gonna do a Kilroy Sarge?” Morita asked.

“Naw, more personal. Jones, you speak German, can you transcribe me a letter, beside that?”

“Yeah, what do you want written?”

“Dear Mr. Schmidt, upon further contemplation we have decided your logo was poorly thought out. A hydra of Greek mythology had many heads and one serpentine body. Your logo has one head and many tentacles. Therefore, beginning immediately, we shall be referring to your organization as Squid-Nazis. Sincerely, the Howling Commandos.” Jones painted as she spoke, then paused.

“I don’t know how to write ‘Squid-Nazis’ because that is not a word,” he told her.

“Technically, neither is Nazi, it’s short for National Socialist, and I maintain the validity of the name Squid-Nazis as superior to Hydra, as that is  _ clearly _ not a hydra. Do it in English.”

“Howling Commandos?” Dugan asked as Jones finished, adding his own arrows and notes to the red logo.

“To quote you, wahoo,” she said evenly. She was still smiling at his laughter when she surfaced next to an empty thing of jello. The clock told her only 35 seconds had passed. She still had some energy left, so Darcy focused on her boys until she dropped again.

They were moving through some woods, and Monty disappeared. Darcy had a bad gut-feeling, so she followed him. He had a guy at gun-point who was babbling in German. A guy she knew.

“Opa?” Her voice, James’ voice, broke a little.

“Nein, no. Unwed, no children. Und far too young,” he added disgruntled.

“James Montgomery Falsworth, you put that fucking rifle down or I will snap your skinny British neck like a twig,” she ordered. The other Howlies showed up.

“Buck, what’s going on?”

“I’m having a Code Darcy and you cannot kill this man. He needs to defect, go help the code breakers in Bletchley Park, meet Alan Turing, then in five years get tracked down by a librarian in Missouri. Corporal Bahrenburg, if you do all that, I can promise you a good, happy life and a grand-daughter who adores her Opa.”

“Bahrenburg? You mean he’s your…. He’s German!”

“Steve... Bahrenburg is a  _ German  _ name.” Darcy gave him a skeptical look.

“Darce, you’re a Jew! You know what they’re doing.”

“On Dad’s side, yeah, but when Opa got half a chance, he ran into the woods and defected. He  _ did not _ do those things, Steve. He  _ did _ get me the best presents for Chanukah. Although, I think he and my Aunt were in some kind of bidding war. And Bubbie Lewis taught him how to make really good latkes. I’m not letting you hurt my grandfather, Steve. It was bad enough when he… the first time, I mean,” Darcy sniffed and rubbed at her eyes. She hadn’t anticipated it hurting this bad. “He’s  _ family _ , and you do not touch my family unless you want to bleed. You got bigger, but I’m the one who brought down Mac the Mountain and I’ve only gotten better. Do not make me choose.”

“Ok, alright,” Steve said, hands up. “Let him go guys, Mr. Bahrenburg, sir, I hope you are ready to defect.”

“I vas planning to. Hyur friend, is he… ein Zauberer?”

“If I am, so’s your wife, Opa. I go where and  _ when _ I’m needed. So does she. We save people. Now come on, we’re getting you to Turing.”

They got him to base with a solid recommendation that he be put on the Enigma project, and then Darcy had to face the music with the Howlies. She explained the basics, Steve backed her up, and they took it pretty well. Of course when you’re fighting a guy whose head looks like a Halloween mask and he’s making weapons from science fiction, you accept a lot. She hugged Dugan extra tight.

“When a dumb seventeen-year-old girl calls you about all this, leave me out unless you think you are really and truly never going to speak to Darcy Lewis again. Got me?”

“Copy that, Lieutenant.”

“Barnes is a Sargent.”

“And you out-rank him, seems like. Cap too, but Sarge already does. You’re our Lieutenant Liberty, like Lady Liberty but with  _ rank. _ ”

“You are six kinds of crazy, Dum-Dum, never change.”

<^>

Steve wasn’t sure how he felt about Darcy swapping with Bucky. On one hand, it was good to know she kept him mostly sane in Zola’s lab, on the other, this flew in the face of all of the things they had read about Swaps. One pair, always, never two. It seemed dangerous. 

Of course, he could hear Darcy’s voice calling him a hypocrite even without the swap. Maybe it was some jealousy too. But that was crazy, he loved both of them, why would he get mad they were getting to know each other? It still felt like a gaping hole in him, a Darcy shaped spot she should be in. Soon, he started to wonder why he’d lost her. Then he switched with her as he stepped on a mine.

_ Darcy, don’t move. We’re on a landmine. _

_ It’s fine, Steve. I got this. _

“Dernier, get your French ass over here, I stepped on something,” she called at a normal speaking voice, as Steve watched in co-pilot mode. Someone was trying to talk to her, but he pushed that away, he wanted to be there if it went bad. A hand touched her shoulder and he flicked it away as he stared out his own eyes in her body. Dernier stood next to her in a moment. “Can you identify it?”

“Topfmine.”

“Motherfuck! I’m standing on a mildly radioactive anti-tank mine? Okay, calming breaths, you do not weigh 330 pounds, what shape is it and does it have a separate raised plate?” Darcy knew about anti-tank mines? And what the hell was ‘radioactive’? Did the mine have some kind of signal device?

“Mademoiselle Darcy?” Steve rolled his eyes, of course it was Darcy, Jacques!

“Yes, now tell me what it looks like,” she said sternly.

“Round, raised plate, only, you’re on it, so it’s mostly down,” Jones said from beside Dernier. “Not all the way, though, if it’s anti-tank it might only detonate if you move.”

“Ok, dump water in the cracks and creases. Series A Topfmines were vulnerable to water killing them.” A few moments passed and Darcy eased Steve’s foot back as she eased him back in control.

“You are one lucky son of a bitch, Rogers,” Morita told him.

“You’re telling me! She’s been doing this since we were sixteen. Took out a guy twice my size, my current size, he was three or four of me then. She’s a judoka. Tested into her Sandan a couple years ago.”

“Really? Me too. Not a dan, though, she must be good.”

“She is, but why am I just now hearing about you? That’s a valuable asset, Morita.”

“I was Nisei, nobody trusts the Nisei and their sneaky yellow man magic tricks.”

“I do, I’d be crazy not to after how many times she saved me with judo, and the only two dans I know are Darcy, who’s as white as me, and Sensei Thorpe, who’s four shades darker than Jones. You use that judo if it makes sense to do so.”

The next time they swapped, Steve had been facing a giant pair of energy guns wielded by a Hydra solider. She shoved him all the way out and he had to handle a doctor asking him questions about trauma and fugue states.

“I’m not in a fucking fugue state, you quack, I’m  _ busy _ . Mentally. I just don’t want to be disturbed while I’m working.”

The doctor spluttered and Steve switched out to find two neat holes in the gun-man’s head and neck armor and stood up before the pooling blood got to him. Over the radio on his belt, Bucky chastised him for getting in his line of fire.

<^>

Bucky noticed a pattern between swaps. If either was in direct danger, that’s who Darcy swapped with. If they needed to not do something, or be cheered up, or otherwise helped without direct life-saving, then Darcy went to him. His nightmares were replaced by Darcy filling in coloring book pages, and Steve’s reckless side was curbed by Darcy’s words coming from his mouth. 

She took over one night in the dead of winter to tell the guys stories from the future. She told them a story about space-ships and brown coats, about broken people making a family that would die for one another, and doing something right if you couldn’t do something smart. She told them another about a crazy billionaire building a flying suit of armor to fight for people who were hurt with things he made. She told them about a tiny blonde girl who killed vampires and defied gods and demons whenever they dared underestimate her. She told them about a green giant saving a teacher from a crazy general with too many guns. She spoke of redemption, and of love, and told stories of a sort of tragedy that was so different from what they saw every day that it was relaxing. He couldn’t tell which ones were shows she’d watched and which she made up, but it didn’t matter in the end. In the end what mattered was that she told them stories for hours until every last one dropped off to sleep. 

He worried, same as Steve did. Even though months passed for them, sometimes not even a full day was marked off for Darcy, and he knew she was utterly meticulous about keeping the record. They all needed it far too much. The doctors and nurses were kind but impersonal when he spoke to them, usually just giving him the directions to whatever room he was supposed to be in. He tried to go to the groups they wanted her to go to, but some of them made no sense, like Music Therapy, although he did like some of the songs.

Nothing at the hospital was what he expected of an asylum. There was pain, sure, but gentleness and respect. Darcy had a growing collection of needle marks on her arms from the blood drawn to monitor her health, and a growing collection of art taped to her wall. Her roommate called her Lost Girl and braided her hair if he let her, hands still weak after her attempt to cut them off at the wrist. The doctors kept mentioning antipsychotics, but when Bucky said he didn’t want them that they made it hard to know when he was, they nodded and made notes and the pills he’d rejected never showed up again. It was bearable, more so than his own life.

In his own life, War remained worse than Hell. He saw too many men die bloody and hard. He held one poor kid’s hand and kept him from looking at the ruin of his leg below the tourniquet as they waited for the medics.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Sousa, Danny Sousa.”

“Name like that, you a Catholic?”

“You gonna do last rites Sarge?”

“Nah, I’m a filthy, sinnin’ heathen anyhow, but I do got a good song for ya.”

Danny Sousa spasmed in the snow from pain with a low moan. He gripped Bucky’s hand hard and Bucky started humming to get the tune.

“When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom, ‘let it be’,” he started, singing low about despair and hope and wisdom and answers until the medics came.

“I’m glad Darcy didn’t see that,” he said later, to nobody in particular. The group hmm’ed in agreement. “I know she’s tough as steel, but….”

“But you love the girl,” said Jones. He looked at everyone staring at him. “What? He does! I got eyes.”

“Jones,” Monty started, “you never noticed anything… unusual about our Captain and our Sergeant? One of those things one simply… forgets to mention?”

“Well, yeah, Cap and Buck are an item, doesn’t stop either of ‘em pining over the Lieu.” He took another bite of cold canned peas.

“Wait,” Steve said, “you all knew, about….”

“You aren’t precisely subtle, Steven,” Peggy told him as she poured herself a whisky and sat down. “Phillips and I have been running interference for you against the higher-ups, and I’m very sure your men have done the same with the troops.”

“They can say what they want, long as they never say it where we can hear it,” Morita added, trying to steal Peggy’s whisky bottle and getting smacked on the hand for it.

“Sweet on the Lieu, though, I never saw that,” Dum-Dum admitted. “She pretty?”

Jaques said something in French that cracked Jones up and made Carter smile. Yeah. Bucky was glad Darcy hadn’t seen it, but he wished he could show her this. Wished he could show her Jones doubled over, Dernier looking smug. Wished he could share the slight smile on Peggy’s face as Dum-Dum begged for a translation. Falsworth lifting the bottle to pour some for himself and Morita. Steve’s loopy smile. 

Their friends knew, and they blessed the union. The thing worse than Hell was a little more bearable for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Swear a blue streak- to cuss until you run out of breath, to really lay into someone verbally.  
> A Kilroy- a little symbol of a guy looking over a fence, signed Kilroy was here! to demoralize the enemy. (For a while there at least one German official was SURE that Kilroy was a high-level operative of extreme prowess.)  
> Opa (German)- Grandpa.  
> Bubbie (Yiddish)- Grandma.  
> Latkes- potato pancakes, often served at Jewish holidays, very yummy.  
> ein Zauberer (German)- a sorcerer, the male equivalent of hexen, or witch  
> Topfmine- a type of German anti-tank landmine made of cardboard and glass to escape metal detection, coated in mildly radioactive tar for waterproofing and detection by Geiger counter.  
> Dan- a black belt in Judo, sandan is also called third degree black belt.  
> Nisei- the Japanese-American troops.  
> Fugue state- an absence of all emotion or response to outside stimuli, a common symptom of trauma or certain psychoses.  
> Quack- a doctor who doesn't know what they're doing, an insult.
> 
> Notes:  
> The things Darcy describes happening to Morita did happen, although the specifics were no more common knowledge than the true horrors of the Nazi camps were. She, like anyone with a functioning moral compass, is outraged by this, but her outrage is sadly rare in the trenches where most people have sacrificed some of their sanity and soul in trade for survival.
> 
> Darcy references the "Dead Parrot" skit by Monty Python with the "gone, dead, shuffled forcibly off the mortal coil, an ex-threat." line.
> 
> Alan Turing, famous code breaker and gay man, worked at Bletchly Park cracking the Enigma code. It took several years, but he did succeed. In the Bodies-Verse, he was only able to get to that point because Darcy's Grandma was swapping with him to help him stay closeted.
> 
> Lieutenants rank above Sergeants but below Captains, and are the lowest Commissioned Officer rank. Of course, the Howlies all know who wears the highest rank in this triad....
> 
> Series A Topfmines were indeed vulnerable to the explosives getting wet, although I found no record of purposely dousing one to disarm it. Steve does not recognize the word 'radioactive' because it did not leave science-circles and enter common language until AFTER the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. 'Radio' to him indicated a broadcast signal.
> 
> The doctor in Steve's scene isn't a quack, he's asking questions based on the presenting symptoms which paint a story different from reality. Steve is on edge and actively going through trauma, though, so he's lashing out because he sees it as being ineffective at protecting Darcy.
> 
> Coloring books are often found in the better mental hospitals, they are very soothing.
> 
> The stories are, in order Firefly/Serenity, Tony Stark's I am Iron Man thing from her real life, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the Hulk Incident (which happened on her campus).
> 
> The song is "Let it be." by the Beatles.
> 
> A number of WWII troops knew about and respected the love-lives of gay soldiers, the Howlies are not too progressive here. If you knew, you just never told anyone who would have to dishonorably discharge the guys in question, because you needed them covering you in a fight. If an officer knew, he did his level best to lie his ass off covering. The only historically too-progressive thing is Jones (and later the rest) accepting that they are ALSO poly and want that sweet Darcy lovin'.
> 
> Cold canned goods were a common staple, Peggy's booze, less so.


	12. Freedom, Sky, and Firefly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy extends her help to the Howlies, Steve and Bucky try to keep the momentum going, and a girl named Rat takes the watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another added chapter, returning readers!

Darcy was taking a hot shower when Steve pulled her in. She spared a moment to regret the loss of fantastic water pressure and a dial that set the exact temperature down to the degree, then looked around. Steve’s swap going active meant a direct threat, but they didn’t seem to be in an active zone. It looked like a forward base.

“Cap, come quick,” someone shouted, and she ran towards the sound. The ruckus was coming from the training yard, where Morita was shirtless and pounding a punching bag hard enough to crack the canvas. Sand was already pooling at his feet when Darcy reached him.

“Jim…,” she said softly, and he brought the spinning back kick around at her head. Oh. So this was why it wasn’t Bucky. Steve’s body knew judo. It had learned the muscle memory as a kid, every time she fought to save him, and now it worked to grab Morita’s leg and twist him around to the ground. He thrashed for a second as she pinned him firmly but gently, then went limp. “Come on, we’re going for a walk,” she said.

“Can’t leave base,” someone informed her. She leveled a dead eyed stare at the man until he withered back.

“My soldier, my call,” she said. “We’re  _ going _ for a  _ walk. _ If someone has a problem with that, they can talk to me later.”

The dead look on Morita’s face didn’t start to fade until they’d been out of earshot of the camp for five minutes.

“Sorry, Cap,” he said.

“For fucking what?” Darcy asked, raising a brow. “Having a bad day? You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I lost it, made you look bad… I kicked you, Steve!”

“One, you don’t have to call me Steve, nobody is out here,” she said and gestured to a fallen tree to sit on. They sat and she tried to decide how to say it. “Jim… how long have you been pushing hard burn?”

“Darcy,” he said, eyes wide. “Uh… I started itching a week ago, when we got here. Just, you know, the shit Gabe and I have to deal with. We don’t when it’s just us, just the Howlies, and I got a chance to taste freedom, so now… I can’t hack it. I can’t take the trapped feeling.”

“You have PTSD,” she said bluntly. “Post-traumatic stress disorder. The human mind isn’t built to take certain types of pain. Being trapped, being constantly under threat? Anyone can crack under that, it’s a sign your brain works. I wish we could have let you heal from that crack, but we need you. If I can do anything to help, I will, but war is a fucking gristmill. It grinds people up and spits them out.”

“This helps,” Jim said quickly. “It helps to not be watching my own back, to be free, to just see the sky and know the world is so very small in the big black void of space.”

“Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand,” Darcy sang.

“I don’t care, I’m still free, you can’t take the sky from me,” Jim sang back. He couldn’t sing at all, but it didn’t matter because he was smiling again.

“Take me out, beyond the black, tell them I ain’t coming back,” Darcy sang, Steve’s voice providing a deeper, melancholy note to the song than her own would. “Burn the land or boil the seas….”

“You can’t take the sky from me,” Jim said, a peace falling over his face. His eyes closed and he leaned on Steve’s broad shoulder. “Take the watch, Lieu?”

“I have the watch,” Darcy said. “Let me know when you’re ready to go back, and let me know if you need another chance to get out of the world. I can’t pull you entirely like I can for Steve and Bucky, but I can do this.”

<^>

Steve felt the tug walking from command to the mess, and he trusted it, even if it was strange to feel a swap on base. He blinked and realized Darcy was in the shower. His blush went from forehead to the tops of her… nope! He turned the water off and grabbed the towel off the tiny washstand, before realizing it was too small to wrap around her body.

_ It’s okay, it’s just a practical choice to speed things up,  _ he told himself. He gave everything a brief drying and grabbed her short stack of clothes, dressing quickly. Stepping out of the shower, he murmured a greeting to her roommate.

“You’re not Lost Girl, are you?” she asked. Steve froze. “It’s okay, I don’t care, but I also don’t think you’re the other one. She moves with hips, he moves with shoulders, and you’re moving like someone put a fishhook in your heart.”

“You don’t… mind? Or think it’s weird?”

“If you’re helping Lost Girl I don’t care,” she said.

“She’s helping me, actually. Us. Everyone,” Steve said, going to sit on the bed. “She’s something else. I’m Steve.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Rat.” She laughed at his shock. “Rats exist without permission, without shame. They fight for their survival with every fiber of their being, but if you put one rat in a tiny cage and let another rat near it, they’ll free the trapped rat. They care about each other, more than humans sometimes.”

“Point taken. Nice to meet you Rat.”

“I was going to go see if Nurse Kayla has smokes, yard break is in a little, you want to come with?”

“Darcy doesn’t smoke,” Steve said. “Her body, her choice. I’d say yes in a heartbeat, but I’m not doing that to her.”

“Good man,” Rat said, and put a soft kiss on the top of Darcy’s head. “Dry her hair, too, it’s going to tangle if you leave it wet.”

“Yes Ma’am,” Steve said and Rat giggled.

_ Steve, I think we can swap back if you’re ready,  _ Darcy sent on the link.  _ Jim almost… if he asks for a chance to get out of the world, get him someplace he can’t hear people and let him just be. _

_ How bad is it?  _ Steve asked, already falling along the link to meet Darcy in his body, which had one arm around a sleeping Jim Morita.

_ He didn’t go full Reaver or anything, obviously, but if a racist ass had caught him instead of me… he could have. Any of us can; make sure everyone on the team knows that. There is no shame in needing a break. _

_ You know that, too, right? There’s no shame in protecting yourself, in getting help. _

_ What break, Rogers? _ she snarked.  _ I’m working here. Somebody has to take the watch. _

_ I love you too, _ Steve thought, and for a second he panicked that he might have thought that out loud, but Darcy didn’t react as they slipped past each other to take their own bodies back.

<^>

Steve had insisted they do some time on outrider duty, and after a closed door meeting, Phillips had agreed. The team they were replacing on the roster was incredibly grateful for the chance to not be out in the potentially enemy filled woods, but the Howlies seemed grateful too. Bucky reflected it was a chance to be themselves, not the versions they’d pitched to the rest of the Army, the lie that let them work together.

It let Gabe be the charming, sassy asshole he was, not the quiet, studious and painfully polite person he showed the rest of camp. It let Morita teach Dugan Japanese, and Monty teach Dernier cooking. It let Steve draw in his ubiquitous notebooks without fear someone would lean over his shoulder. People thought he was making battle plans in them, but the truth was more beautiful, and in some cases, almost lewd.

“She is going to kill you, Steve,” he said, looking at the latest artwork.

“No she won’t, she loves Xena,” Steve countered.

“You’re drawing her in a leather swimsuit, a racy one.”

“Racy?” Dugan asked, head popping up like a giant ginger groundhog. “You drawing pin-ups, Cap?”

“Not exactly a pin-up,” Steve said, and Bucky had to admit the coy flirtation of a pin-up was absent. Darcy, despite the swimsuit pretending to be armor, was posed ready to fight, a whip and some circular weapon on her hips. The blonde woman behind her was laughing, joyous but only for herself, not for any audience.

“Damn, this is good, Cap,” Gabe said. He could be near silent when he wanted to, and Bucky had been looking at Dugan, so he didn’t notice Jones beside him.

“Well come on then, share with the class,” Monty said, and Jaques nodded with him.

“She really will kill you,” Bucky warned as Steve passed the book around.

“She will not!” Steve insisted with a laugh. “Look, if I tell you the story of where the outfit came from, you’ll get it. This is one of her favorite characters, from one of her favorite shows when she was a kid. You know the ones she tells us, over the fire? This is Xena, the Warrior Princess.”

“Well, now you’ve got to tell it,” Bucky said, tapping Steve’s nose. “Come on, I don’t know this one.”

“I couldn’t do it justice,” Steve protested, but he shrugged under the expectant looks of the team. “Okay. In a time of ancient gods, warlords and kings, a land in turmoil cried out for a hero. She was Xena, a mighty princess forged in the heat of battle. Her courage will change the world….”

Bucky listened to Steve tell the story of redemption, but his eyes were on their men. After Jim had come so close to breaking, they’d taken steps to help relieve the pressure. Part of that was the outrider duty, but part was Bucky stepping up his watchful eye. He couldn’t miss it again, that put everyone at risk.

Sure enough, he spotted Dugan awkwardly shifting away from the fire. He tapped the big man on the shoulder.

“Come on, let’s go on a Firefly run.”

“I don’t need a…”

“Maybe I do,” Bucky said, daring Dugan to deny him. Out past the firelight, in the dark, honesty was easier. “So what had you in knots?”

“The Lieu is hot? You never told me the Lieu was hot!” Dugan burst out. Bucky had to laugh.

“It was pretty well implied, Dugan.”

“That doesn’t count, you know I’m an idiot! They call me Dum Dum for a reason.”

“Not where I can hear them,” Bucky said darkly. Dugan cuffed his shoulder.

“Hey, it’s better than my real name _ , Bucky,” _ he said pointedly. “And this way, they underestimate me. Just the dumb muscle, yeah? Not like I’m learning three languages and can drive anything with an engine, is it?”

“Not at all, Dum Dum,” Bucky agreed.

<^>

Rat watched Lost Girl. Lost Girl wasn’t like the rest of them, wasn’t repairing something broken in her head or her heart. She was actively breaking as they watched. The doctors didn’t seem to see that, but Rat did, so Rat tried to help catch the pieces as they fell, tucking them into Lost Girl’s pockets and keeping her from collapsing all together.

Lost Girl had friends, too. She had Sweetheart, his bold grins and his gentle hands, all wonder at the world. She had Picasso, his fragile motions like the world was too sharp and big and scary, but put a pencil in his hands and watch the tension pour off her body like he was drawing up a shower to cleanse their soul.

The doctors didn’t talk about patients, not where others could hear, but it wasn’t Rat’s first rodeo. She knew they didn’t like people who were more than one person. Didn’t like anything that swarmed. That was fine, they didn’t have to  _ like _ Lost Girl to help her, but Rat passed the word to the others who’d been there before, the old hands who knew the nurses by name and every inch of the ward.

Protect Lost Girl’s alters.

Defend them from people who would try to smash the newly sprouted flower bud, just for growing in a crack.

Make sure Picasso has his pencils, or crayons, or anything to draw with. Save your sugar for Sweetheart, he can never get the watery decaf sweet enough. Be kind, be kind… because we live in a world where only the sick recall to be kind, and that’s why we’re all here, isn’t it?

Let the doctors worry about trauma and dopamine and amygdalas, but be kind to one another, become the medicine of connection, and all will be well again. It is the patients with the patience to support one another. To share coping tools and make safe places to heal.

Rat passed the word, and in loving and protecting Lost Girl, Rat forgot how to hate herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Hack it: take the pain or pressure  
> I have the watch: I love you. Not necessarily romantic or sexual, but definitely love.  
> Smokes: cigarettes.  
> Reaver: the wild, deadly cannibals of Firefly, also in the Howlies slag for someone who breaks under the strain of war and gets violent.  
> Pin-up: a sexy portrait of a woman.  
> Firefly run: Howlie-slang for getting away from the War for a moment to relax and cope with the traumas.
> 
> Notes:  
> Morita's reactions and understanding are temporarily slowed down due to his emotional and mental state, which is why he doesn't recognize Darcy at first and lags a bit in answering questions.
> 
> Rat doesn't realize there's time travel involved, but she has noticed that there are three distinct people in her roomate's body. She assumes that's a case of Dissociative Identity Disorder, and handles it as she's learned is most appreciated by Networks (people who are more than one person). This includes introducing herself to new alters and acknowledging when Steve abides by a boundary for the body.
> 
> Outriders stay outside the range of territory controlled by the base, sweeping the perimeter for danger or signs of the enemy. It's rough and sometimes lonely work, but more helpful than not to the Howlies, who all feel somewhat like outsiders on base due to race (Gabe and Morita), nationality (Monty and Jacques), or perceived intellect (Dugan). They don't have to mask around each other, so outrider is actually relaxing for them, for all it's risky AF.
> 
> Medical science has only recently come to grips with the fact that people who are more than one person exist and are valid. Even today there are doctors who stick to the "integration treatment" model that treats the existence of alters as an illness, rather than a reaction to trauma. Protecting the perceived alters from discovery and helping them feel happy and safe is about all the other patients can do, but it's better than nothing.


	13. Camp Cracker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy gets a handle on things, plays with clay, and uses Jewish Guilt for the forces of good.
> 
> Steve is a Very Good Little Captain because he really wants to jail-break another camp, pretty please?
> 
> Bucky is just glad they have some goddamn help this time, even if one does make Steve worse.

Darcy struggled with the balance of war-zones and psych ward. At least they let her sleep as much as she wanted to, now. She had been in for three weeks, according to her calendar. It felt like years.

She practiced meditation and got in extra rest that way, to keep her mind sharp for the swaps. She struggled to maintain some kind of normal, as her doctors praised her progress in group therapy sessions she only half the time actually went to. Steve left her a pencil sketch of a very pretty woman who might be Darcy, sitting on the gun of a tank, putting on lipstick. The face was turned to a side profile, but the compact mirror showed a wicked crooked smirk. Her art therapist thought it was a good sign for her self-image. 

What was good for her self image was spotting the fully painted version on the half dead Jeep that Dum Dum babied along, repairing it and talking to it like a living being. And a slightly different one on the butt of Monty’s gun. And a small rendition of just her eyes on the back of Morita’s helmet, watching his six. She used a scrap of drawing paper and the lipstick samples they brought through on Saturdays as a ‘look good feel good’ therapy to leave Steve a lip-print to copy. Soon every weapon the Howlies used had her kiss on them, and that did feel good.

Then of course there was the time she found pretty decent play-dough replicas of each Howlie in her art box. Not in uniform or carrying weapons, just little figurines of her friends. Play-dough Steve had a tiny split lip, small enough it could be a crack from the drying, except Steve had miscalculated the rebound of the shield and busted his lip, which everyone teased him over. 

She turned play-dough Peggy Carter over, and scratched in was Peggy’s name, and the initials JBB. They all had the names scratched in, and they all had JBB. She arranged them together on the craft table and grabbed some tan modeling clay, the kind that didn’t set up unless you baked it. She wasn’t as good with manual dexterity as Bucky, so she made vaguely humanoid blobs, using her nails to show them dripping like Clayface in the old Batman animated series. Then she had them lined up on the other side, opposing the Howlies.

“That’s very interesting, Darcy, can you tell us what it is?” asked the art therapist.

“Well, those are the Howling Commandos,” she pointed to the figurines Bucky made. “And those are the Dough Boys, mindless monsters created by mad Nazi scientist Arnim Zola. They were sent to capture Steve and Bucky, but the other Howlies are going to smash them.” She picked up mini-Dugan and brought his base down on the still soft modeling clay of a Dough Boy. “Wahoo.”

“And that one? Is that you?” the therapist asked, pointing to the little frowning female figure in the red dress. Huh, Darcy had never noticed she looked a little like Agent Carter.

“I  _ wish, _ ” she said firmly. “No, that’s Peggy Carter. She’s the best Commando. She does everything Cap does, backwards and in heels, like Ginger Rogers. Heh, Rogers.”

“That’s interesting. Which one do you think you’re most like?”

“Steve and Bucky,” she said instantly. “And a little bit Jones and Dernier. I’m reckless like Steve, stubborn like Bucky and sassy like Dernier and Jones. Can I go take a nap now?”

“Yes, but lunch is soon.”

“Okie-dokie smoky!” Darcy went back to her room with a pilfered bit of modeling clay. She turned it into a little heart shape and closed her eyes to drop into another horrifying event.

<^>

Steve had pretty well worked his ass off to get Phillips to let him hit a prison camp. It wasn’t technically Hydra owned, but the intelligence suggested something that made his gut clench in both fear and anger. 

So, Steve glad-handed until he thought even his super endurance would fail, let the press film him, refrained from knocking the block completely off the guy who called Gabe something so bad he wasn’t willing to even think it. He hadn’t even done anything that would get him killed in a month, and everyone was upset they hadn’t gotten to see Darcy. But it was going to be worth it. 

They needed some extra man-power, so Peggy called a cousin who played poker with a guy in the Canadian Rangers, and Monty called in ‘an absolute loon, but good at his job’ from his training days in the British Airforce. Pinkerton had flown the plane Monty’s old squad last flew in. Dugan called up some people he knew to run the ground side of the operation, and Morita got his old captain to come out for the mission.

Everybody except Morita and Jones did a double take at Captain ‘Happy Sam’ Sawyer.

“He’s negro,” Dugan said with a confused voice.

“You don’t really think the Generals were going to let a bunch of Nisei lead themselves, did you?” Morita asked him.

“No, because the Top Brass are all idiots, but I kind of assumed they’d put an incompetent white man in charge of shit he couldn’t handle. It’s a very well-established pattern.”

Happy Sam laughed, “how’d you get the big one to learn that?” he asked Morita.

“Not me, Sir, that was all the Lieu. She threatened to hobble a guy behind lines and leave him there if he disrespected the Nisei. Never got a bad word since, except the ass who insists the Cardinals have no good players. Glaviano is gonna make it, swear to you.”

“That’s an argument you’ve had with everybody Jim, it’s not a Nisei thing, it’s a Fresno thing. You sound like a damn fine woman, ma’am,” he said to Peggy, who smiled and didn’t clarify.

“Why don’t we all go somewhere a little more secure,” she suggested. “Everyone here has been read in, but your drivers have not.”

Inside the Command building, Steve began to debrief them. “So, out intel tells us a separate branch of Nazi super science, the folks brought in to replace Schmidt after his falling out with Nazi High Command, is operating on a more “organic form of war” at this facility.”

“Biologics, Sir?” Corporal Juniper asked.

“No, a little more human. They want a Superman. Some of the people who got rounded up are... let’s call it  _ special. _ They’ve been ordered to replicate it, but these are the kinds of guys who smash clocks to find out what makes them go tick. And now, they have _ people _ to study. It will not be pretty.”

“No offence, Captain,” Pinkerton said, “but how special could they be? Human is human. I was promised a thrill ride, not a camp-cracker.”

“This room secure?” Howlett asked. It was the first time the Ranger had spoken. Steve nodded. Howlett growled, held up his fists, and nobody questioned the motivations behind the mission again.

“Cap?” Dugan asked a few hours into planning. “Do we have any word on this from the, uh, back channels?”

“Not an option,” Bucky answered him. Steve nodded. They were worried about the time dilation effects, Darcy’s calendar was tracking up to a dozen swaps a day, more than anyone in the records had ever pulled. The warnings of what happened to the body and the brain when the swap was pulled too far were... intense. If they could do anything to help, they had to. 

“There are enough problems on that end,” Steve agreed. “We do not activate unless Code Darcy becomes the only way.”

“You have a spy?” Pinkerton asked.

“We got a ‘something you aren’t cleared for’, son,” Steve said firmly. “Unless a Code Darcy actually happens, we won’t speak of this again.”

They hit the base at night. Pinkerton dropped them off, and after the others were out, Howlett looked at Steve. “Race you down,” he said and jumped without a chute. Steve laughed and did the same, bouncing around trees to slow his fall. 

When he landed the more normal way, Bucky shook his head, and slapped Steve’s.

<^>

Bucky saw things in that compound he would have given an arm to have sand-blasted from his mind. The experiments, the torture, the records. He looked at the papers detailing the powers of these special people, kids, mostly, and torched the whole office. Nobody was going to hunt them for being unique if he had a say. A commotion drew him to a building where Steve was pinned to a wall with his own shield by a kid in a glass cage with a nose-bleed. Steve coughed and Bucky reached for Darcy. She slammed into him so hard that he popped over to her enough to see a little clay heart on a desk before re-routing and going to do a ride-along.

“Hey, kid. Do you speak English?”

No response. Bucky’s focus darted to the outstretched arm. Numbers... a brand intended to mark someone as less than human. He felt Darcy see it too.

“Vos volt deyn muter trakhtn?” Darcy demanded of the boy.

“Vas?”

“Haltn es itst, iung mentsh.”

“Ir zent idishe?” he asked cautiously.

“Close enough.” Bucky watched Darcy unshoulder his rifle, the modified Betsy he got after Zola, and smack the butt dramatically but with little force on the ground. “LET MY CAPTAIN GO!” she said, pointing firmly at Steve. 

The shield wobbled and he got a gasp of air. Bucky wanted to run to him, but Darcy was driving. Instead she walked over to the cage, tapped it a few places, and waved the kid back before hurling a brutal side kick into the glass. It spider-web cracked, and she tapped the fracture some. She went to Steve, pinned but not in danger and tugged the shield. It didn’t budge.

“SERIOUSLY! A man walks in with a star on his shield and you don’t…”  _ Bucky, do you have chalk? _

_ Yes, right-hand vest pocket. _

She pulled out the white stick and sketched a six pointed star on the shield. Pointing at it, she said “I need this.”

“David of the Goyim,” Steve rasped out.

“Yes you are, you’re great, you’re a mensch, now shut up. I know what a busted voice box sounds like, remember?” Turning back to the boy, she pointed again. The shield fell free, she scooped it up and brought the edge down hard on the crack, shattering the front. “There ya go. Oops, no, you have bare feet, here,” she said as she turned to offer a piggy-back ride. “Take the shield, Steve, I thought that thing was supposed to be light.”

“Darcy?”

“My Yiddish give me away? I don’t actually know that much. Only enough to activate potent and repressed Jew-guilt. Mostly because I was a little shit as a kid and Bubbie used it on all of us. Every Lewis cousin was terrified of upsetting her. My Uncle Levi still is, and he’s fifty.”

“Wow, and they said us Catholics were bad.” Darcy’s laugh faded into his mind as he got the kid into a hastily appropriated truck and Jones drove the freed prisoners to a safe-house that would smuggle them back across the lines.

“Be good, kid,” Bucky said as he ruffled the boy’s hair. “No more hitting the good guys. Yo, Howlett, you can ponder the meaning of life later,” he called as he pulled him away from his sniffing the air. Lowly, he said to the other man “Kid’s like you, but not, leave it.”

“Yeah, better that way… but still. If Vic weren’t such a….”

“You got troubles at home?” He cocked a brow.

“Not those kinds, brother thing. Probably make a terrible parent anyhow. Kids’d all grow up bloodthirsty.”

“Hey, you got a better shot than me, pal,” Bucky said, clapping Howlett on the shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Play-dough: hard drying modeling clay used in children's crafts and art therapy.  
> Clayface: a DC comics villain who looked a lot like a humanoid blob of dripping tan goo.  
> Okie-dokie smoky: a very chipper and annoying way of saying yes.  
> Glad-hand: to shake peoples hands as a way of getting them to give you stuff, hated by many of the people who actually need the stuff because "we have a problem and you want me to wear a tux?"  
> Knocking the block off someone: to hit them so hard their head might as well have fallen off.   
> Top Brass: the highest Army leadership.  
> Hobble: lame, as in damage ability to move.  
> Read in: given clearance to know something upon swearing an oath not to reveal in.  
> Biologics: biological weapons, from Anthrax to Bubonic Plague, nasty and feared since the day someone decided to put a leper corpse in a catapult and see if it would break a siege.  
> Superman: the philosophic idea of the perfect human, better in every way.  
> Camp-cracker: a mission to liberate a prison camp. Generally awful and depressing.  
> Back-channels: someone not in the official line of communication. Normally a spy or double agent.  
> Cleared: given clearance to know.  
> Chute: in this case, a parachute.  
> Torched: lit on fire.  
> The yiddish conversation means roughly "What would your mother say?" "What?" "Stop that right now, young man." "You're a Jew?"  
> Mensch: a person of honor and goodness. (Yiddish)
> 
> Notes:  
> Art therapy can take many forms. Steve likes to draw (duh) during his, but Bucky prefers things he can hold, he's more tactile with his art. Play-dough figures acting out fantasies are common tools in art therapy, blending art and play therapy methods.
> 
> Dough Boys were a comic-canon creation of Arnim Zola, and looked as described. They are not canon in this verse, and Darcy calls them that because the name also was used as a slightly derogatory term for soldiers in the First World War.
> 
> The line about Peggy being like Ginger Rogers comes from Hayley Atwell, who plays Peggy. Ginger Rogers was an actress who did very impressive dance scenes with actor Fred Astaire, only as the woman, did them backwards and in heels.
> 
> Pinkerton, Sawyer and Juniper appear as back-up Howlies in an episode of Agent Carter, these are their backgrounds in canon, with the exception of Juniper who got recruited by means unknown.
> 
> Nisei were NEVER led by an Asiatic American, even if not of Japanese decent. Segregation laws and regulations would have made leading the Nisei a "shit detail" or punishment work for a white man. Hence Happy Sam being black.
> 
> The Fresno Cardinals were a minor league baseball team and Glaviano did indeed have a major league career.
> 
> Yes, Howlett is Logan, although right now his name is James Howlett and he has all his memories. There were too many James's so I'm only using his last name.
> 
> Logan and Steve did this in a flash back in an X-Men comic where Wolverine got his memory back briefly. It's still insane, even with the Serum, to try slow-falls from a plane.
> 
> Darcy's pantomime is of the scene in the Passover story where Moses demands that the Pharaoh let his people go. The rifle serves as a staff here.
> 
> She is checking the density of the glass when tapping, allowing her to better break it. This is an advanced technique, but Darcy is pretty advanced herself.
> 
> Jews and Catholics are often compared by the guilt that seems endemic in those cultural mores. Jewish Guilt and Catholic Guilt are concepts most people of both faiths know of, even if they never feel it. I know this bit seems disrespectful, but it is in fact a transcription with minor changes of a conversation had between my Catholic mother and her Jewish Goddaughter. Don't ask me how that happened, Aunt Debbie made the choice and you never argue with Aunt Debbie. I'm neither Jewish nor Catholic and she can guilt me.


	14. Checking Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy checks out of the hospital and tries to get a handle on helping her boys from home. Steve and Bucky try to keep the team alive and sane so they can take on their biggest mission yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another new one!

“Lewis, you have a call,” one of the nurses said, tapping Darcy on the shoulder during dinner. Darcy tried not to miss meals, she knew the boys were always hungry on the war front, they shouldn’t be hungry when they were with her. Still, though… a call on Thanksgiving would be rude to turn down.

“Hello?” she said into the worn handset of the old-school public phone. It was in a small room off the nurse’s station, and there wasn’t a door because technically the phone cord counted as a ligature risk, but people tried to let it be private.

“Darcy! How’s my niece doing?”

“Hanging in there, Uncle Joe.” Darcy smiled at him. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Happy Thanksgiving. Hey, kiddo, I have some vacation time saved up, I’m going to come out to Virginia next week and spend Chanukah with you.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be out of the hospital by then,” Darcy said.

“So I’ll come visit you during visiting hours,” Uncle Joe countered. “Darcy… if you’re not seeing any improvement after this long, that hospital might not be the right place for you. I want to take a look at what they’re doing, and if need be I’ll get you transferred to someplace that can actually help you.”

“I’m not sure anyone  _ can _ do more than this,” Darcy said softly. Joe was from her Dad’s side, she couldn’t explain what was really happening. She wanted to, she knew he worried, but she just couldn’t. “Meds are worse than nothing, and at least the art and music therapy seems to be taking the pressure off.”

“What about an intensive outpatient, then?” he offered. “Double down on what works, but let you sleep in your own bed and eat food that hasn’t been methodically stripped of anything interesting in the name of a healthy low sodium diet.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” Darcy said, thinking wistfully of her mom’s meatloaf. “I’ll see you next week. Bring latkes.”

The next day, Rat put an origami fish in her hand.

“I’m checking back into the real world,” she explained, tucking a lock of bleached blonde hair behind her ear. The tip was still pink from their experiment with washable markers a few days ago. “My number is in the fish, if you want to call when you get out.”

“Let me get you mine,” Darcy said, scribbling her number on the back of one of Steve’s sketches. “You helped keep me sane in here, which I know is ironic as hell, but I really appreciate it.”

“Any time, Lost Girl. Tell Picasso and Sweetheart I said goodbye, yeah?”

Darcy blinked. She didn’t know Rat knew. At the same time, it wasn’t like Rat had changed how she acted, and if there was one place in the world it was sort of normal to have friends in your head, it would be here.

The next week was rough. The new roommate who took Rat’s bed was in for a detox and had an empty look in her face that weirded Darcy out. Darcy didn’t want to shower, for fear the older woman’s dead eyed stare would catch her naked. When Uncle Joe arrived, she hastily agreed to switch to intensive outpatient, which the doctors agreed to, since Joe rattled off his own clinical qualifications and swore to take over the home care aspects.

Honestly, she had a better handle on the rapid swaps now, she could tuck them into her day at planned times. It was almost where she had been before the War. Spending six hours doing music, art, and dialectic therapy, then coming home to listen to all the songs she missed during her stay, helped more than staying in the hospital, always watched, would have. 

She still needed six credits to graduate, but the idea of going back and retaking her last courses with the same professors she bailed on, the idea that people would look at her and whisper about how she’d had a breakdown, was unbearable. She decided to try for an internship instead, and started sorting through the email notifications from the department, applying to anything that remotely appealed. She even filled out one for the Latverian Embassy and was actually relieved when she got the polite, handwritten refusal. For a crazy dictator, Von Doom wasn’t half bad at writing a gracious rejection letter that didn’t make Darcy feel bad about it.

Uncle Joe cleaned her entire apartment (not terribly impressive, it was a postage stamp one-bedroom) and cooked dinner for them (much more impressive, her kitchen was a fridge, a sink, and enough counter space for a single hot plate and her coffee machine). They lit the candles and sang the songs and ate way too much fried food, and she felt better, little by little.

<^>

Steve wiped his bow after a sparring session with Morita. They were waiting on orders, yet more hurry up and wait shit that seemed to multiply the closer they got to winning. They’d helped clear a path to Bastogne a week ago, and since then been cooling their heels while Phillips found them a target.

Everyone was restless, especially since Howard had been pulled to go work with the Soviets on something, Peggy was back in London fighting with British Intelligence over Monty’s continued attachment to their squad after his older brother died and he technically inherited a lordship, and Phillips had stashed them in what had been a forward command base before the war moved on. A whole base, meant for a regiment, housing seven soldiers. It felt like they were waiting for someone to announce the world had ended while they were benched. 

So, Steve was sparring with Morita, Gabe was fiddling with the placement of the button he was sewing back on Dugan’s uniform jacket. Dugan himself was in his undershirt trying to turn their various ration packs and the produce Jaques had bought with the petty cash budget into something they could tolerate eating. Jaques was playing with the salvaged parts of the super-bomb they’d dismantled in Epinal, trying to figure out the timer mechanism even though it’d been pretty well destroyed by several hits with assorted blunt objects until a 20 lb sledge had cracked it. Monty was beating Bucky in a game of chess made with spare nuts and bolts and a board painted on a crate with aircraft paint.

“Does anyone have an idea for our after dinner entertainment?” Gabe asked.

The less they thought about dinner the better, although the addition of any produce they could beg, borrow, or barter off the locals made it more palatable, so they had fallen into the routine of an after dinner entertainment, something to look forward to and think about instead of the generally bland, overly soft ‘meat’.

“If anyone suggests Charades again, I’m poisoning this food to put us all out of our misery,” Dugan announced. “Not that it’s going to make a difference, we’re down to M-units of stew.”

“At least we have fresh fruit?” Steve offered, slicing a strip off an apple and feeding it to Bucky.

“Small mercies,” Morita said, passing Steve the water canteen. “Drink, you need to replace your fluids. Just because you _ can  _ fight on almost nothing doesn’t mean you should, and you know what Howard always says about your metabolism.”

“Do you mean, “I wish I had that low of a body fat percentage” or “it must be hell to not get drunk”?” Steve asked.

“I meant “you need to eat four times as much to stay alive”, you idiot.”

“Hey, don’t call your Captain an idiot,” Steve said. Then he looked at Bucky’s face and dropped to one knee. “Buck, what’s wrong?”

“Partial swap,” Bucky said, tears flowing freely down his face. “She’s listening to a song. I….”

“Feel it, remember it, and sing it for us,” Steve ordered. Bucky nodded and closed his eyes, humming softly.

“After dinner sing-along, then?” Gabe asked.

“Works for me,” Monty said.

“As long as I don’t have to do a solo I’m good,” Dugan agreed.

Jaques let out a string of French invective and hurled a screwdriver at the wall. Then he shrugged and said “mais ouais.”

After they were done scraping their metal bowls clean with the good bread Jaques had brought back yesterday, and the bowls themselves had gone in the dip-bucket of water and bleach before being hung to dry, Steve looked to Bucky again. His love had a far off look on his face, the vague sort that meant he was talking to Darcy on the link.

“Sing it out,” he began, his voice shaky until it solidified with the shift of facial muscle that told Steve Darcy was helping. “Boy, you've got to see what tomorrow brings. Sing it out. Girl, you've got to be what tomorrow needs. Every time that they want to count you out, use your voice every single time you open up your mouth. Sing it for the boys, sing it for the girls, every time that you lose, sing it for the world. Sing it from the heart, sing it till you're nuts, sing it out for the ones that'll hate your guts. Sing it for the deaf, sing it for the blind, sing about everyone that you left behind. Sing it for the world. Sing it for the world.”

Gabe picked up the melody on the battered harmonica he’d found during their clean up of the base. It had killed one day of boredom and rendered a few trinkets worth keeping, like the instrument now providing a lonesome counterpoint to Bucky’s voice.

“Sing it out. Boy, they're gonna sell what tomorrow means. Sing it out, girl, before they kill what tomorrow brings. You've got to make a choice, if the music drowns you out…” Bucky nodded at them as he put his all onto the last line. “And use your voice every single time they try and shut your mouth.”

“Sing it for the boys, sing it for the girls, every time you lose, sing it for the world,” The team knew Bucky’s nod and joined him on the chorus. “Sing it from the heart, sing it till you’re nuts, sing it out for the ones that’ll hate your guts. Sing if for the deaf, sing it for the blind, sing about everyone that you left behind. Sing it for the world, sing it for the world.”

On the next verse, Bucky drummed his hands on his knees and Dugan picked up the beat to give him an extra layer of percussion.

“Cleaned-up corporation progress, dying in the process, children that can talk about it. Living on the railways, people moving sideways. Sell it till your last days, buy yourself a motivation. Generation Nothing… nothing but a dead scene, product of a white dream. I am not the singer that you wanted, but a dancer. I refuse to answer or talk about the past, sir. Wrote it for the ones who want to get away…. Keep running.”

Bucky’s voice broke on the fast pace of the words, the clipped sentences like the jagged edges of a broken promise. His tears had started again, and Jaques moved to brace the side that wasn’t pressed against Steve.

“Sometimes you share shit and it feels like we can’t help but win,” Dugan said contemplatively. “Like Darcy is proof of a future where Hydra is gone and people are better. Sometimes you share shit and I wonder if we win by setting the world on fire and letting God sort it out.”

“I don’t know what’s going on here and I don’t want to know,” Colonel Phillips said, striding in. “But you have four days to sort it out on your way to the Alps. We intercepted some Hydra communications and managed to find your team a target.”

“What’s the target?” Steve asked.

“You boys remember Arnim Zola?” Phillips asked. 

“Fucking Zola,” the Howlies growled as one.

“Amen,” Phillips agreed. “Get packed, you have a train to catch.”

<^>

A tension had settled in Bucky’s gut, like a line pulling taught against his spine, dragging him towards a confrontation with Zola. He could see it when he dreamed, a bare metal room, Zola’s round pudgy face bleeding from Bucky’s fist. He could hear it in the rumble of their Jeep, the man’s rage as Bucky proved to be more than he’d bargained for. He could taste it, a taste like metal and rubber and blood, a smell like electricity and poison, a bite like a blade in the cold air as they slowly climbed the mountain. This fight mattered.

“This fight matters,” he muttered.

“Course it does,” Gabe said from his left.

“More than normal,” Bucky said. “It’s… special, somehow.”

“Darcy?” Gabe asked.

“Quiet,” Bucky said. “There, but muted. Maybe this is the Thing.”

“Let’s hope so,” Gabe said. “Not that I want you to lose your girl, but if it’s the Thing you get to rest some.”

“Rest?” Bucky said incredulously. “What is this ‘rest’ you speak of? I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

“Hey, no death talk before battle,” Dugan said sharply from the driver’s seat. “It’s bad luck.”

“I don’t believe in luck,” Morita said firmly. “I believe in skill. I believe in us. We’re going to catch that son of a bitch and use him to get Schmidt, too.”

“Your lips to God’s ears, eh?” Monty chimed in.

“I have a good feeling about this,” Steve said with a smile. “How far to the jump point?”

“Another hour to the base camp, then it’s a forty minute hike to the jump.”

“Faisons ce truc,” Dernier said.

<^>

Joe watched Darcy haul herself back from a brink he didn’t understand. Even with his background, his degrees, his own practice, he had to admit he’d never encountered anything that exactly mapped to Darcy’s symptoms, and he could only be proud of her as she managed to cobble together something sustainable to solve the problems he couldn’t touch.

He celebrated with her as she found the internship that would give her the credits needed to graduate, and drove her to the airport. She had booked a flight with three stops, but no layovers, and promised to call or text whenever she was on the ground. He had faith in her strength, and knew she would be alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> mais ouais: but of course or yes.  
> Faisons ce truc: Let's do this thing.
> 
> Notes:  
> While the author is in favor of using mental health facilities for times of crisis, they just aren't well designed for long term use. They're intended as short term care while a problem is solved. Other types of facilities cover long term care, from share homes to institutions. Checking out and finding a more functional solution is best if the hospital itself can't fix the issue in a few weeks.
> 
> Detox from drugs is one reason people check into mental health facilities. However, while people using the anti-addiction services is a valid and valuable use of the resources, the first few days going into detox can produce deeply unsettling side effects like flat affect, the 'dead eyed' look. The new roommate isn't necessarily a bad person or trying to creep Darcy out, she's just unwell in a way that inherently is upsetting.
> 
> Shame and stigma are some of the worst side effects of getting treatment for mental health, but they are way better than dying from lack of care. If you need help, please reach out to health care professionals and seek treatment.
> 
> The war sections are set in January 1945: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge#Siege_of_Bastogne
> 
> C rations (combat rations) consisted of a can of M-unit (meat units) and a can of B-unit (bread/dessert units). It was just as unappetizing as that sounds. The stew was purportedly the worst of them all, because the meat was mushy and the fluid was neither thick enough to be gravy nor contained any seasoning beyond salt.
> 
> Dip-buckets are buckets of water and bleach used to clean dishes in the field. Bowls and utensils would be wiped clean, put in mesh bags and dipped in the bleach to sanitize them before drying. It's faster than soap and if done right nobody is left with wet hands that would be a liability if the enemy shows up. I have no proof of this as a military technique, so assume Darcy taught them this trick.
> 
> The song is MCR's SING, but I'm using this cover as the base for pacing how Bucky sings it because I needed a track with minimal instrumentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgX9SVq3wZ0


	15. Planes Trains, and Oh God The Feels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things will happen even when everyone tries to stop them.
> 
> Yup, it's that chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Watch your headspace, this one is a bumpy ride.

Darcy had thought it was a little weird when she got Dr. Foster’s acceptance letter. Foster was in astrophysics, and Darcy was… not a hard science girl. But it was the only internship she’d been accepted for that would give her six credits, and nobody in New Mexico knew she’d had a breakdown. 

Her seat was a window seat in the rear of the plane, and on the first leg she didn’t have a neighbor, so she poked the link. Choosing when she would go back had been the biggest breakthrough so far, allowing her to focus on both her work with the boys and her own life.

She slid down into Bucky as the plane took off. He was pinned down in a small…  _ fuck _ . He was on a train. Dugan had told her he fell off a train. No trains, trains bad. Of course Dum-Dum had told her he saw Bucky, too, right before Buck’s voice told her to back off. Right after Bucky killed… oh god.

_ Darce, you alright? Your hands are shaking on my side. And the lady wants to know what you drink, I asked for a ginger ale, it was familiar and I’m nauseous, that good? _

_ I’ll be fine, ginger ale is fine. Hold on, I’m getting Steve _ .

She did something she wasn’t sure could be done, but then, she and Steve had done the theoretically impossible before, just to watch movies together. She and Bucky had broken the rules of the swaps because he needed her. She was certain there was very little that the three of them couldn’t do. 

So she swapped over to Steve, and showed him Bucky’s view-point.

_ On my way, _ Steve thought at her

_ If you could hurry, Steve, that’d be good, _ she told him.

_ Let him take his time, Doll, I’m not going anywhere,  _ came Bucky’s mental voice.  _ Planes are fun. _

YOU AREN’T GOING ANYWHERE BECAUSE YOU ARE PINNED DOWN WITH ENEMY FIRE, BUCKY! The two thought in unison.

_ Huh, mental stereo,  _ Darcy thought only to herself.  _ That could be useful for yelling at Steve later. _

She snapped back to Bucky. She was pretty good with a side-arm now, although she’d never be able to do his sniping, and just enough shots gave Steve room to get in to take out the others. Grabbing the shield to protect Steve wasn’t even a question. She had been saving his ass since he was a kid, since she was a kid, and that Hydra bastard was not going to take him away. Not from her, not from Bucky. 

The blast took out the side wall of the cabin, but Darcy locked her foot around a bolted shelf support and fired again. Steve hit the guy with a solid shot and Darcy turned to smile at him with a feral grin. The next she knew, she was clinging to the rail of the deformed wall of the train and Steve was coming to get her.

“Grab my hand!”

“Stop moving, you idiot, you weigh 240 pounds, you’ll snap the bar!”

“Damn it Darcy, GRAB MY HAND!”

Darcy reached, but her hands were cramped from holding the bar and numb from the freezing wind whipping by them. Her foot shifted on iced up metal, her hand grazed Steve’s, and she slipped.

_ I’m so sorry Bucky. _

<^>

Steve wasn’t sure there was any worse feeling than seeing both his loves plummet, until Darcy’s mind collided with his and he felt her grief, her memories of falling, of knowing she’d fall, of not being able to stop it.  _ He died a hero, people are going to remember what he did, I swear Steve. _

_ If they remember, if you knew, why didn’t you tell us! _

_ Like you came clean in undergrad about reading Anne Frank? _

_ How was I supposed to know! _

_ All my post-it’s were pink! And you could have told me after! _

_ …you would have been mad. _

_ I was mad, I knew you’d read it when I found my book mark in the wrong page. I never yelled at you. I loved him too. I wanted to stop this, I did what I could, we both did. _

_ It wasn’t enough. _

_ No. It really wasn’t. _

They mourned together, and when Jones came to get them, Steve wasn’t sure if it was him or Darcy telling the story. He finally pushed her away when the doubled loss was too hard to take.

The Howlies grieved together, got really horrifically drunk in the bombed out shell of the once bright and happy bar they’d first come together at, and when others came, they helped the inebriated core Howlies leave. Howlett sat next to Steve and slugged back half a bottle of whisky before handing it to Steve, who finished it. They drank most of the bar’s stock together in silence.

“I get you lost someone you love. But your men need you,” the Canadian said when the last Howlie hit the floor to be hauled away.

Steve flicked his eyes at James Howlett. He liked the man, he was a capable soldier and he still had functioning empathy, two things that hardly ever happened together if you’d been military long enough, and he knew some of Howlett’s history. Enough to know Howlett was more senior than anybody in any armed forces except maybe his older brother, he’d seen all the things that should make a man give up on humanity and then some. But he wasn’t sure he  _ trusted _ Howlett.

“Buck was like a broth-”

“I don’t do those things with my brother, bub, rethink your defense. ‘S not like I care you two were lovers. You were damn good together, and Barnes was a good man, a good soldier, and he was never scared of what I could do. I owe him for that, and if you think he’d want me to keep my trap shut I will. It’s hardly the first time I’ve served with men who were more than friends or family, and I respected them. Admired it, even, that you’d come and fight for a country that thinks you’re crazy to love someone. Think that’s the crazy bit, but I still admire it.”

“They won’t always think that. Someday, they’ll think it’s just fine. She promised me.”

“Darcy.”

“What do you know about that?” Steve’s rage was a palpable living thing inside him.

“Your ‘thing I’m not cleared to know about’, you called it Code Darcy. And then, despite not smelling like any woman in that hellhole, Barnes walks out smelling female. You have a spy, or a contact, you call Darcy. Bettin’ she’s like me, a bit.  _ Special _ .”

“Not special enough to save him. Neither was I.”

The bar was emptying. Howlett clapped his back and left the last bottle on the table. Steve was still drinking when Peggy came to talk to him.

He shut Darcy out, for all the psychic shoving at him. He kept her out of planning, out of him getting captured. The Red Skull had him held back as he disrespected Erskine and the rage filled him to the point he stopped caring if Darcy was there. She slipped in as the Red Skull was asking what made him so special. Steve was about to tell him someone broke physics because he was special long before Schmidt ever even heard of Erskine, when Darcy whispered in his head.  _ Let me, he’s just another entitled douche-canoe, I can hurt him worse, I have practice and he deserves it. _

_ Do it. _

“Absolutely nothing.” Schmidt stared at them, and Darcy smirked. 

“I’m just a kid from Brooklyn,” Steve added. 

Schmidt lost it, punching brutal strikes into them. Steve tried to push Darcy away but she wouldn’t let him. 

_ Oh please, Steve, I’ve had periods worse than this. _ Then she started to laugh. 

“You seriously thought it took someone special? It only takes someone  _ human. _ ” Another flurry hit her, catching up under Steve’s ribs. Her laughter cut off with the burst of air forced out by a strike on the diaphragm. “You know, the real irony here is that in order to maintain your ideology, to keep the flawed logic from collapsing around you like a house of cards, you need me to have been  _ better  _ than you. You  _ need _ there to be something inherently magical about a ninety pound, 4F, orphaned child of Irish immigrants.”

“But I don’t need you,” Steve added. “I know my worth and you don’t factor into it. Face it Schmidt. You’ve lost either way, because if I am better than you, I’ll beat you, and if I’m not, your life is built around a lie. I'm proof anyone can be anything, we can all be better human beings and superiority is a pipe dream.”

Schmidt hit them again, leather gloves with armored knuckles shaking Steve’s teeth. Darcy spat blood onto Schmidt’s polished boots.

“I could do this all day,” Steve growled.

“Of course you can, of course, but unfortunately, I am on a tight schedule.” He drew a gun as the Howlies zip-lined in. Darcy pulled back, aware Steve was now better in a fight using his body than she was but she stayed with him. He liked having her there. When they found the hangar, she suddenly pushed one thought forward, a memory, like he had done for her, years ago at Lehigh.

A phone call, her head holding the phone to her shoulder. “Darcy,” said a voice like Dugan’s but tired and old sounding, “when you can, when it matters, you tell that Irish mother’s son he ain’t allowed to die. Only person Cap ever took orders from was you, so you tell him he can’t die until all of us are down. All of us. Because I swear the guy what just took out my cameras is that same dumb sunova who fell off a---” 

A thump. The static resolved into a soft conversation. The line was picked up. 

“Kukly, leave it.” 

_ That was Bucky’s voice _ , he thought.

_ You aren’t allowed to die, Steve. You’re supposed to, but you aren’t allowed, because he is alive and I will find him. I know how now; I’ve connected to him. I will search every single neuron in my brain until I find him. _

_ You find him, I’ll make sure there’s a world for him to come back to. _

_ Tell Carter to kiss you. I can’t so I need her to. _

“Peggy, Darcy asked for a favor.”

“Anything for the Lieutenant.” Phillips looked at her funny.

“She can’t kiss me.”

“I see. What I do for King and Country,” she sighed and hauled him into a kiss.

_ Ok, I might be bisexual, _ Darcy thought and Steve stared at Philips, since it was less awkward than looking at Peggy.

“Don’t look at me, I ain’t kissing you.”

Steve fought, Darcy encouraged him, and she stayed with him as the plane went down. He noticed her repeating numbers.  _ What’cha doing, Darcy? _

_ Tracking our vectors. I taught this to, to him for the sniping, now I’m figuring out exactly where you’ll land, and then I will launch a fucking Arctic Expedition if I have to, if it’s the only way to get you back. _

_ I love you. _

_ I love you too. Deep breath, close your eyes, now! _

He felt the plane impact, and then he was tossed forwards and lost consciousness.

<^>

“More ginger ale?” a flight attendant asked. “We encountered some headwinds and will be another half hour before landing.”

Darcy blinked at her, still jarred from the sudden loss of the swap.

“Can I borrow a pen?” she asked. She had to get those numbers written down before she forgot them. As she finished writing them along her left forearm a thought hit her.

She couldn’t feel the link.

Even if she found him… all she’d get is a seventy year old corpse.

Steve, and Bucky… were dead.

_ Fuck. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Ginger Ale- a non-alcoholic ginger soda that existed in both times and is good for nausea.  
> Bub- Logan-speak for pal. In this instance, used sincerely.  
> Douche-canoe- possibly confusing for our German readers, douche does not refer to a shower, it's referring to the feminine cleansing agent, and a very strong insult. A good translation would be a bidet-canoe, but that doesn't sound cool in English.  
> Pipe dream: a crazy idea, a hallucination.
> 
> Notes:  
> Plane-travel was a luxury thing in Bucky and Steve's time. They would only have flown in military planes, which are not fun. They are uncomfortable, noisy and badly decorated.
> 
> Quick reminder, neon pink was Darcy's color code for 'do not touch'.
> 
> oss of empathy for others is one of the hall-marks of being in the Armed Fores for too long. Empathy can be a lethal weakness in a war zone, and often gets narrowed down to just "my people" and everyone else is not a priority. High ranking officers (Generals) sort of have to check the empathy at the door, because they need Vulcan-like logic and reason to minimize loss without think of the unavoidable losses. See uses of euphemisms like friendly fire (you shot your own people) and slurs for enemies like Japs, Krauts, Charlies and others.
> 
> Many many gay soldiers served in the same units and when one of a pair of lovers died, it was custom, if not a spoken one, to treat the bereaved like any grieving spouse. One reporter, after the Don't Ask, Don't Tell act was repealed, came forward with photos of a soldier kissing another as the medical copter arrived. He did not release it at the time because when his flash went off, the men's squad threatened him if he hurt their squad-mates. And yes, being anywhere on the LGBT+ spectrum was considered a mental illness.
> 
> Bucky smelled like Darcy because our pheromone production that determines individual scent is dictated by the brain, and Darcy's brainwaves were running things. Nobody else would have gotten that, but Logan has super-smell.
> 
> Some lines taken from First Avenger, some added, because Skull-boy deserves to be mocked.
> 
> A poorly landed punch to the gut (and I reviewed the scene, his form was terrible) can feel like a bad period cramp if you brace for it first.
> 
> For King and Country was a popular British propaganda line. It is used semi-sarcastically here.
> 
> If Steve flew in a straight line and angled down, knowing his approach vector could give someone a good idea where to start looking. However, Darcy now has lost contact with the only people who could get there quickly enough to have a reasonably chance of finding him alive.


	16. Fucked Up, Insecure, Neurotic, And Emotional

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy meets Jane and tries to find a way to keep moving after losing the men who matter most to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another new one with extra Angst.

Darcy landed at the Roswell International Air Center half an hour delayed. She was grateful for that, it gave her time to haul herself together. Seeing both the guys she loved die, from inside them, it almost destroyed her. Especially knowing that her job was now done. She’d never see them again; their purposes were over. The uncaring universe that saved them just so they could die at the right time was through with her.

She sent Uncle Joe a text that was almost entirely a lie, just enough truth about things that didn’t matter to cover the biggest lie of all… that she was fine.

In the airport bathroom, she redid her makeup, dark bold colors to distract and deflect, a peacetime version of camouflage paint. Outside the terminal, she met Dr. Jane Foster. Dr. Foster was carrying a spiral notebook with LEWIS written on the open page, although it was rotated at a 90 degree angle, since instead of looking for Darcy, she was writing on the other page.

“Dr. Foster?” Darcy asked.

“Huh?” Jane said, looking up with her tongue caught in her teeth like Bucky used to do when aiming. She held out a fine-boned hand that showed wrist bones like Steve’s. Darcy’s heart hitched as she shook it. “You must be the Intern.”

“Darcy Lewis, yep. I’m not much of a scientist, but I hope I can be helpful.”

“I don’t need you to do science,” Jane assured her. “I need a lanny. A lab nanny. I rabbit hole really bad and I need someone to remind me to eat and sleep, and help me source parts for my gear. If you can jerry-rig things too, that’s great. You’ll also be in charge of talking to the public when people get curious about the crazy star lady, and finding motels if we leave Puente Antiguo.”

“I can do that,” Darcy said with a nod.

“Great, can you drive the RV? I’m on hour… 40 something without sleep. I probably shouldn’t have driven up here.”

_ Fuck me sideways, she’s just like Steve, _ Darcy thought.

Jane became more friend than boss pretty quickly. Without Steve and Bucky taking up her mind, she used it on reforming Jane’s life into something resembling functional. She put alarms on her phone for Jane’s mealtimes, and compiled a comprehensive list of things Jane would eat if she put them in her hand. Hot Pockets, Pop Tarts, and protein shakes, which she kept stashes of in the mini kitchen of their refurbished filling station base. She figured out which bribes and threats would get her boss into bed on time, and convinced the locals that Jane wasn’t going to end up building a fifty foot tall robot with laser eyes.

She also repaired equipment. She didn’t know what the machines she was fixing did, exactly, but it didn’t really matter when she was pulling on all those hours helping Steve fix the electric lights, watching Bucky take apart rifles, and teaching the team how to hot-wire a car. She missed them, and apparently it showed. 

Jane asked her about it one day. Darcy tried to put her off, but Jane was persistent and it all came out. Every detail, every memory, every feeling, poured out at top volume. Jane held her and let her scream out her anger and fear and loss, then looked her in the eye and said Science-talk. It was so Jane of her that Darcy had to laugh.

<^>

Jane wasn’t a people person. She never had been, she liked the stars and math and science. Even the people who liked those things didn’t like Jane, she upset their preconceived notions. For her part, she didn’t like that they  _ had _ preconceived notions they were willing to let get in the way of learning. She had a few friends who understood that, mostly other scientists, and that was enough. Jane didn’t need masses of people around to be happy, she needed a few carefully chosen persons.

Darcy Lewis was a people person. She laughed at the right times, smiled the right amount, and generally charmed the populace of Puente Antiguo. People wanted to talk to her, and she let them, and then they helped her. It was a chain reaction of cause and effect that Jane admired but didn’t know how to replicate. She also wasn’t immune to it. She wanted to help Darcy too… and she saw the deep pain the younger woman was hiding when everyone else missed it.

“Who died?” she asked one day, trying to keep her voice soft.

“Lots of people die,” Darcy said. “Man is mortal, it’s a natural thing.”

“Who did you care about who died, I mean” Jane clarified. “You’re grieving, but I’ve never heard you talk about them.”

“I’m fine,” Darcy insisted.

“You aren’t,” Jane said. “Don’t lie to me, please.”

“It’s not a lie,” Darcy said. Jane frowned and geared up to go on her usual rant about asshole neurotypicals saying the exact opposite of what they felt and assuming everyone would know what they meant, but Darcy undercut her with a rueful grin. “I’m fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional. F. I. N. E. Fine.”

“Can I help?” Jane asked.

“Can you turn back time?” Darcy asked with a choked sob. Jane gently patted her shoulder, and it was like a door opened. “I lost the two most important people to me, men who have lived in my heart, and I don’t mean that in a sappy way; I mean I shared their thoughts, their feelings. I fought a war with them, I kept them fed and when I couldn’t I felt their hunger. I took their pain, their trauma. I reached into the past to hold them together with these two hands, knowing they were going to die because Time is a bitch and the Universe is an asshole. It still didn’t prepare me to die with them. Now I’m anchorless because for the longest time my life has been about them and I don’t know what I want for me, and I should be upset about that but I’m not. I just want them back, and I can’t have that, because I  _ can’t _ turn back time.”

Jane didn’t know how to unpack all that, so she decided to start at the beginning.

“Technically, Einstein-Rosen bridges tunnel through space-time, where time is just another dimension of the four dimensional fabric. While most scientists who work on quantum theory are focused on spatial entanglement, bodies that remain linked across great distances, it’s possible that there could be temporal entanglement, a link connecting bodies in time. An Einstein-Rosen bridge could allow one of those bodies to reach and influence another. It wouldn’t be turning back time, since anything done in the past would then become what had happened, constantly updating and retconning the future, but it would allow contact.”

Darcy started crying. And laughing through the tears.

“Never change, Jane, that was exactly what I needed.”

“Glad I could help,” Jane said.

At two in the morning, Jane sat up from where she’d just laid down on her pool chair bed on the roof.

“Darcy used an Einstein-Rosen Bridge!”

<^>

“Have you talked to Jane lately?” Jemma asked. Her lab partner Fitz looked up from his most recent project.

“Not since I sent her the design update for the active spectrography filter for her telescope. Why? Is she okay? She said she was getting a lanny.”

“She did, but now she’s emailing me, asking about brain physiology.”

“That’s not her focus at all!” Fitz said, scrunching his nose. “Ask what prompted the new line of inquiry.”

The next day, Jemma got another email, this one even more confusing.

“So her intern was telepathically communicating with the past,” Jemma explained after they were off work. She was sitting on Fitz’ sofa, and he was sitting on the floor in front of her, painting her toenails. He scrunched his nose again, his facial cue for figuring out people. “She says she’s double checked the possibility of psychosis, but the intern doesn’t meet the criteria. What caught Jane’s eye was the fact that the telepathic communication followed principles of quantum entanglement, two bodies, two different places in both time and space, but the same response to stimuli. The bodies in question just happened to be brains.”

“Well now we know why Jane wanted brain physiology information.”

“Yes, but clearly she’s working with someone who…” Jemma sighed. “Is it a matter of professional conflict of interest to help her? We’re SHIELD, do we need to report this?”

“Do you want to be responsible for putting Jane in DH Douche’s sights?” Fitz pointed out. Their department head was an utter asshole, hence the nickname. He wouldn’t treat Jane kindly, especially once she opened her mouth and said something delightfully Jane. He wouldn’t see it as delightful. He’d probably treat the intern like an 084, not a person. “We’re not _just_ SHIELD, Jemma. We have other ethical duties, including protecting the people SHIELD would say we’re protecting people  _ from. _ Part of the choices we’ve made is deciding which rules we’re following in each case.”

“I hate this,” Jemma sighed, not for the first time. “I wish we had one loyalty to one SHIELD.”

“You know why we can’t,” Fitz said. Jemma nodded, and petted his hair. They would survive this, like they survived everything since the Academy. Together.

<^>

In between studying odd storms, Jane studied Darcy. Darcy let her, because an unbiased observer studying her brain as she reached across time and space looking for her boys made her feel less crazy. 

Just as Jane provided mounting evidence that Darcy wasn’t crazy, Darcy was proof Jane wasn’t crazy. Unfortunately, Darcy refused to let Jane publish anything that included their research on her brain. The old family stories agreed that secrecy was safety, and even letting Jane think she was a one-off was pushing the limits of what Darcy was okay with. Heck, she was still lying her ass off to Uncle Joe… or rather, selectively telling the truth. Jane had pointed out that would be more effective, and she was right.

Aside from the secrecy-based fly in their shared ointment, Darcy and Jane developed a close friendship based in Science, Jane’s one true love. Jane introduced Darcy to her friends, a small cluster of mad scientists on heavily encrypted chat lines. Darcy introduced Jane to her family over video calls, and the care packages that came as a result were useful and welcome.

One of Jane’s friends, Fleming77, helped with tool design for both sides of Jane’s work. They were the source of designs for the who-knows-what machines that Darcy put together with parts from the Puente Antiguo junkyard, and the information about what a normal human brain would look like, so they could pin-point what made Darcy different.

After Darcy went on a rant in all caps about not wanting to fake another concussion to get them an updated CAT scan, Jane received a package containing a floppy tweed mash-up of a cloche and a deerstalker hat that had sensors inside. A little work with Fleming77 and Darcy had a whole new level of not getting hard science to appreciate, and some ideas how to improve the links. Like any exercise, it took time and repetition. Fleming77 theorized that Darcy’s push to try new things when they were young had strengthened the link, slowly building something more stable than the earlier links, increasing her control. It didn’t make it safer, though. In one of the hat-scans, they found a small part of her brain burned out. Nothing dangerous, not immediately anyway, but a sign she should be thankful she hadn’t spent more time down the link.

She wasn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Jerry rig: makeshift repairs made with only the tools and materials at hand.  
> Retcon: to revise retrospectively, typically by introducing a piece of new information that imposes a different interpretation on previously described events.  
> 084: an unknown and possibly dangerous artifact
> 
> Notes:  
> In the Bodies-Verse, Jane is autistic. This is my headcanon for the MCU-Verse too, but I can't control the MCU's choices not to make it official. I can here. Her primary symptoms for which she needs assistance are social communication (she alienates people by asking questions and focusing on finding answers, rather than softening her approach to soothe egos), rabbit holing (going into a deep state of focus where she needs to be reminded/forced to do self care things like eat, sleep, bathe and use the bathroom), impulsivity and executive function failure.
> 
> Speaking of retconning, the scene with Fitz and Simmons will make more sense later after more information is revealed about their history and the history of SHIELD.
> 
> FitzSimmons share the online identity Fleming77. Darcy will continue to think of them as a single person of unknown gender until corrected, and thus her PoV will use the singular they for Fleming77.


	17. Thor, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the world gets weird, the weird get tough. Darcy Lewis is tough and weird, and people are going to start noticing.

If life had taught her one thing, it was that getting comfortable with your level of weird meant that a new level of weird was about to hit. This was confirmed for her with the arrival of Eric Selvig.

Eric was a friend of Jane’s dad, basically her own Uncle Joe. He showed up because he was concerned, and Darcy thought the concern was genuine, but something rubbed her wrong about the guy. She found herself upping the annoying every time he got in Jane’s way, and by the end of day one, she was popping her gum and considering the lessons of the song Cell Block Tango.

Of course, Darcy had never been one to shirk away from facing her issues head on, so she took the guy out for a beer. It was more like dragging him, but Jane had been fed and watered and had another three hours on her schedule, so Darcy would have thrown him over her shoulder if she thought she had the carrying endurance to make it to the bar like that.

“Back the fuck off Jane,” she said, as the bartender set their drinks down.

“I beg your pardon,” Selvig started, and Darcy shook her head, curls bouncing.

“Not mine, Jane’s. You apologize to Jane, not me. You’ve done nothing to  _ me _ except in my capacity as Jane’s boundaries. Which you definitely crossed, and while I could give you the names of men who would tell you crossing me is a bad idea, they’re all dead now.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“I’m defending Jane,” she clarified. “I believe you when you say you care about her, but you’re doing a shitty job showing it and she’s not going to tell you that because Jane doesn’t think you can do better. I do.”

Selvig’s face stuttered. She watched the thoughts race across his eyes. Anger, first at her, then at himself. Sadness. Confusion. Denial, then more sadness as he realized her words held up under the burden of proof.

“Jane knows you aren’t like her,” Darcy explained, softening. “You’re normal, for a given value, and she’s given up on ever getting through the language barrier because she’s not fluent in Normal. She’s accepted your behavior as the price of having your friendship. I’m more stubborn, and I’m a half decent translator. So here’s the deal. Stop stepping on Jane as she talks. Let her finish a thought. She never pauses more than two seconds unless she’s actually done, so count it out to know if you can speak. Stop calling her work names, it matters to her like a person matters to us and how would you feel if someone insulted someone you love?”

“My wife was black,” Selvig said flatly.

“Then you understand me,” Darcy said. “Stop trying to touch her while she’s working, it annoys her. You can tell because she chews her pens. Stop trying to feed her.”

“She forgets-”

“Yeah that one was on my behalf. My **job** is keeping her on a schedule of food, rest, and hydration that keeps her alive. If you make her eat meatloaf at noon because that’s when  _ you _ want lunch, I can’t get her to eat  _ her _ lunch until six pm, which means she won’t eat dinner until midnight, which means her sleep schedule is thrown off by two whole hours and the next day is shot. You’ve only been in town two days and I’m planning a week of re-calibration so she doesn’t miss the next new moon. Let me do my job.”

“I’m sorry,” Selvig said. “I had no idea how hard I was making things.”

“I hear you,” she said. “Now you do though, and if I forgive you hinges on one question. What are you going to do about it?”

<^>

Eric had heard the term ‘talk is cheap’ before. He’d thought he’d understood it… until he met Darcy Lewis. The girl looked like an airhead, moved like a thunderhead, and rendered it impossible to do any less than you’d promised with a look. She scared him, but he could see the kindness in her movements as she talked to the townspeople. The way everyone treated her with a gentle respect.

He didn’t know what he was seeing until they went storm chasing and Jane hit a man with the van. His mind was awash with legal repercussions, lawsuits and reckless driving charges. Jane was clearly only focused on the atmospheric effect, recording data quickly and ignoring the man except as a witness with possible data. Darcy’s reaction to the stranger's yelling… was to pull a side-arm on the man and fire. Even if that side-arm was a taser, it wasn’t the reaction he’d expected of a physics major looking after an absent minded professor. 

“What?“ she demanded defensively as he looked at her in a new light. “He was freaking me out!”

“Help me get him in the van,” Jane said, putting a hand on his arm like he’d done to her for years, a sign to stop, to wait before speaking, to get all the data first. “We’ll get him to the hospital.”

“No grabbing the wheel this time,” Darcy said grumpily.

Eric was no idiot. He knew the signs of someone hiding behind sass. Her pride in her taser skill aside, her chipper facade was just that, a facade. Underneath was the brittle edge of someone hard-used by life, nursing trauma and loss. The easy way she resorted to violence when necessary, but never crossed a line of reasonable force, added to an inescapable conclusion.

Darcy had served in a war.

“I thought you were a science major,” he mentioned mildly as they went over the data.

“Political science,” Darcy explained.

“She was the only applicant,” Jane supplied. “I’m glad... it works well. Now look at these stars, these aren’t our stars. See, this is the chart for our quadrant right now. Unless Ursa Minor decided to go for a walk, these are someone else’s constellations.”

“Jane, you need to see this,” Darcy announced, and Jane handed her papers to him so she could go look at the image Darcy was pointing at. A human figure falling from the aurora in red and white spectrographic proof.

“I think I left something at the Hospital,” Jane announced.

<^>

Steve dreamed. Little flickers of Darcy, barely there and then nothingness. Was this Hell? Constantly tormented with tiny sparks of the light he needed, then darkness?

He almost got a clear one, calling out to her and getting a response. 

_ I… died? _

_ Apparently not. Neither have meddling government fuckers. You seein’ this?  _

A man in a suit was trying to get around her as her barked orders at the men with him. She body blocked the leader with deft footwork that followed his movement so he couldn’t get around her smaller frame.

_ Yeah, jerk shouldn’t be touching what ain’t his, _ he thought as the guy tried to push her aside with no success. The link felt like a satisfied grin when she angled her body so his hand brushed her breast and the man turned a bright beet shade.

_ Agreed. My taser is out of charge, though, I had to knock out the ‘God of Thunder’ Thor.  _

_ Wait… what now? Thor? _

_ Yeah. Life is weird. _ He could agree, and so was this, whatever it was.  _ But I’m still out of ammo and defending the fort on my own. _

_ So deck him, you can take him. _

Darcy fought, really well, better than Steve had ever seen, and she got in some good hits before the suited asshole stopped being surprised and fought back. He was good, too, easily as good as Sensei Thorpe. Even as they traded strikes and feints, Steve felt Darcy relaxing, a bubbling like happiness coming across the link as the man used the coffee table to launch a spinning kick that could have removed her head if it hit. 

She was facing a worthwhile opponent, one she could let loose on, Steve realized. He held back from distracting her, but when she used a lunchbox to block a fist, the man froze, his fist stopped just shy of the image of Steve’s shield.

“You have a near-mint 1945 Captain America lunchbox. And you put it in front of my fist? ARE YOU INSANE?”

“Steve would want me to protect myself. If the cost of that is a lunchbox with a cartoon design of him which he never really liked anyway, so be it.”

_ Damn straight Angel. _

He hated those comics, they made him some kind of perfect unattainable level of the American Dream. He was a poor, scrappy, chronically ill, queer, Irish shit-kicker from Brooklyn, not… that.

“How would you know that?”

“Me to know and you to wonder, Secret Agent Boy.” Something clicked and Steve felt her anger rising. “Oh, my, god, you’re SecretAgentMan45! You jerk!”

_ Don’t say anything you’ll regret, _ Steve warned. Darcy sent him a nod and he tasted the blood from where she’d bit her lip. They watched the goon recover from his confusion.

“I need to confiscate everything that has data, STRIKE, you’re on that.”

Steve heard Dacry call for help, but the darkness was dragging him back.

Yes, this was Hell.

<^>

Phil Coulson was an adaptable man. He had to be, to do his job. He helped draw the line in the sand, planted his feet firm by the River of Truth and held the shield that defended mankind from the things that went bump in the night, the day, and every moment in between. He also lied an awful lot, protected the strange and unusual, and prayed every day he could be half the hero his idols were.

He adapted to the sudden display of martial skill by the assistant with his own not inconsiderable skill. He adapted to her use of an inconceivable shield with a laser focus on his mission.

“I need to confiscate everything that has data,” he said. He turned to the team he’d brought with him. He didn’t trust most of them as far as he could throw them, but the woman couldn’t fight them all. “STRIKE, you’re on that.”

“You can’t do that!” she insisted. “This is her life!” 

Phil watched her run outside, shouting for her boss. He could practically feel public sentiment turning sour around him. The locals hadn’t liked him busting up their competition with the hammer, but they were  _ angry _ about this woman’s distress.

After packing up everything and hauling it back to the temporary base at the crater, he called Barton into his make-shift office.

“What do you think about Lewis?” he asked mildly.

“The assistant? She’s a certifiable BAMF.” Hawkeye stretched, casually flashing a signal that conveyed his assumptions of her loyalties… not tied to anyone yet. “Good leadership skills, potential rallying point if we can’t control the court of public opinion. Fighter, hand to hand specialty, although she has used a side arm, I saw her try to go for it earlier.”

“Recruitment options?” Phil said, adjusting his tie in a signal of his own.

“Not for SHIELD,” Clint said with a side to side bob of his head. “She hates us, for one, and for another… she’s got chaos coming out her pores. She reeks of it, just as bad as Harrow. Do you wanna be at ground zero if they meet?”

“Fair point,” Phil said. An alarm started to blare. “Get to a perch,” he ordered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:  
> Cell Block Tango is a song about women who killed men, mostly because they had it coming.
> 
> Eric in canon had a number of annoying habits I'm here having Darcy call him out on. The worst one for me though was the number of times he straight up insults Jane's line of research by calling it science fiction or otherwise implying it's made up and not real science, but all of them rub me the wrong way and Darcy gets to be my mouthpiece.
> 
> Darcy's discussion of how easily Jane's schedule can be thrown off is based largely on my own experience with the issue. Routines are important and fragile to a lot of autistic people and it can take forever to get back on our regular patterns if they're disrupted.
> 
> In "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer" Coulson displays some extreme martial badassery. He's proficient enough to teach in at least two forms from my analysis. Darcy surprises him, but he would have won had she not used his Kryptonite against him.
> 
> Hawkeye is well known for his aim, but Phil respects his assessment ability too. He watches people and he understands what he sees.
> 
> Harrow is an Agent. Harrow is well known for being chaotic. We will see more of Harrow and yes, they meet. It is Terrifying and it is Glorious.


	18. Thor, Part 2

Thor’s willingness to go get Jane’s stuff back earned him brownie points in Darcy’s book. His insistence on doing it alone pissed her off. She knew he was probably going to get caught, so she borrowed a laptop and called up a friend from the encrypted chats.

Red_Skyes was a hacker, a good one, and it didn’t take long for her to hack the local DMV and use the picture Darcy had snapped at the diner and an old ID one of Jane’s exes had left in her van to create the newly minted Donald Blake, world’s buffest surgeon. From there, she and Darcy made up a bit of backstory, and the accompanying paper trail. Community college degree, resume on some job hunting sights with a spotty history, a few bills in collections on his credit score, mostly student loans and medical bills. It didn’t let her know if he’d made it, but it felt better.

Eric came back with Thor well past midnight. He didn’t get back her iPod, but as he handed Jane her notebook back, Darcy was seeing serious heart eyes happening. She knew Selvig had tried (and probably failed) to give Thor the shovel talk, so when he was safely positioned to sleep off his hangover and Jane’s snores could be heard from the roof Darcy brought a blanket up. After ensuring her scientist was warm, she turned to the Thunder God.

“We need to talk. I’ll use easy words, because you talk like your last contact with humans was in the Middle Ages, which meshes with the tentative timeline of Norse mythology. That is Jane,” she pointed. “Jane is mine. I care for her, I keep her alive, I tell her she’s not crazy and I keep her from actually  _ going  _ crazy. I lost the last two people I did that for. I will not lose her. If you hurt her, we will see if a god can bleed. If you destroy her, which you are in a unique place to do, I will rip you apart into bits like Osiris of Egypt, and hurl the pieces into.  **The.** **_Sun._ ** Are we clear?”

_ I forgot how scary you can be _ , said a voice in her head that wasn’t real, Bucky was dead and so was Steve. However much she wished her imagined conversation had been real, she still couldn’t find the link. She ached for them, like a missing arm.

“Verily. I wish the Lady Jane no harm. My intention is pure.”

Thinking of the not-real voice and her pain and her loss and her love, Darcy looked at him with a severe resting bitch-face. 

“That doesn’t change the fact you can, easily. She loves you. It is always easy to hurt those who love you, even if you have only the best of intentions. Here, we say the road to Hell is paved with them,” She remembered a page from the book she’d grabbed earlier. “I think that word was borrowed from your people. And if your good intentions harm her, that’s exactly where you’ll go.”

“I have no doubt you could do such a thing. You have my word, Sister of Lightning.”

“Good. I don’t like letting Sparky off the chain, but I will if I have to.”

“I now see why the All-Father has kept Mjolnir from me, you are a better warrior than I. More noble and honest in your purpose.”

“I learned from the very best of men what it was to be noble, to fight for the right reasons. That war sucked, but I did learn.”

“Would you consent to teach me?”

“Alright, it’s a story about a boy named Steve with no sense of self preservation, his shield-brother who loved him, and a girl from another time who watched them grow up, change the world and die….”

<^>

Clint Barton saw best from a distance. The people who knew him, the real him, respected that. Phil Coulson was one of them. It was why he watched Phil’s interrogation of the fighter who’d taken out half the base worth’s of STRIKE goons from Phil’s office. The man didn’t resist the questions like most well trained agents. His face still had a normal range of micro expressions, and while Natasha could control that sort of thing, Clint didn’t know anyone else who could. The fact that those expressions read as grief… icing on a cake that spelled out what he needed to know. He buzzed Coulson’s phone.

“I thought I saw flickers on Afghanistan and South Africa,” Coulson said. “But they could have been very hot or very cold. He’s hard to read.”

“Nope,” Clint said, shaking his head. “He’s mourning. And his face when he tried to pick the hammer up? Someone got his reality tunnel collapsed on top of him.”

“Phil?” Sitwell asked, sticking his head in the door. “He has a visitor, and a name.”

Clint gestured for Coulson to go handle things, and when his phone buzzed and the screen lit up with an order to follow the fighter and the doctor, he obeyed. They ended up in a bar, but Clint wasn’t feeling up to that. Instead he hit the nearby diner for a cup of coffee and some pie. He spotted Lewis and took his plate to the end of the counter by her.

“This seat taken?” he asked.

“Sure is, Jackboot,” She said without looking up from the laptop in front of her. Given he helped inventory the contents of the lab, he knew it was borrowed.

“Doesn’t look taken,” he said. She shot him a poisonous glare and he held up his hands before setting something down on the vinyl-covered seat in question. 

“My iPod!” Her face broke open with delight and relief, and Clint felt something in his chest tighten painfully. He seriously hated being seperated from Nat in the field, and it was costing him efficacy if he could see his partner in the mystery woman.

“Peace offering,” he explained. “I’m sorry, about earlier. SHIELD can… go overboard, sometimes. We see things pretty regularly that would make a normal person rightfully paranoid, but we should hold ourselves to a higher standard.”

“Okay, you are tentatively forgiven and the nickname of Jackboot is withdrawn,” she said graciously. “What do I call you?”

“Clint, Clint Barton,” he said, producing a business card from her ear with a flick of his wrist. “Call me whenever you feel like it.”

She didn’t take the card. 

“Sorry, I just lost the love of my life,” she said, and her face registered the pain of a dead loved one, not a breakup. “I’m not looking for anything new right now. And you do work for a super sketchy secret government black ops group… which I feel might be a conflict of interest considering I plan to be a giant pain in the ass of any form of fascism I happen across.”

“Good plan,” Clint agreed. “My handler, the one you had that nice workout with? He says if you aren’t sure of a course of action, you should ask two questions. One, would it make Captain America proud of you? Two, would it piss Hydra off? If the answer is yes both times, you should absolutely do it.”

“That bodes,” she muttered. “If it bodes well or not….”

“Just keep the card,” he asked, setting it down. “Call if you need anything. Heavy lifting, a coffee run, cover fire… anything at all, just call me.”

<^>

Darcy almost wished she’d done more with that card than shove it in her wallet.

“Maria! Get your van, take as many kids in it as you can, drive East, at least fifty miles. Jack, I need you to put flats of bottled water in your truck and do the same. Stick with Maria and the kids. Miss Ruth! What are you doing here?”

“Helping,” the elderly Miss Ruth said tartly. “Who do you need moved, Ma’am?”

Blinking at the weirdness of being called Ma’am by a woman in her eighties, Darcy pointed to the bar. “There’s idiots in there who plan on trying to fight this thing. I’d take ‘em if I thought they had half a chance but they’re the sort who only like frontal assaults.”

“Consider it done,” Ruth said and tottered off into the bar.

“Would you take a fighter who likes all kinds of attacks?” asked Stan. He was a veteran, and Darcy liked him. “Because I have a truck that’s practically armored, and no real inclination against hitting below the belt.”

“That’s a suicide play,” she said.

“Sacrifice play,” he corrected. “I’m old, this will at least let me drink free in Hell for a few weeks.”

“Come in from the side and aim to swipe his legs,” she said, tears welling up. She pressed it down. “If he’s jointed like a human, you can blow the knees out.”

“Regi patriaeque fidelis,” Stan said. Darcy nodded and went back to herding civilians out of town.

<^>

Fury’s eye twitched and he mentally assigned Coulson the next Not My Circus award for craziest bullshit. “Run that by me again.”

“Thor, the Norse god of thunder, was sent to New Mexico on time out by his dad. Something about an international incident. He couldn’t lift his hammer, Mjolnir, until he proved he was worthy.”

“What does that have to do with the rock-em-sock-em robot fight?” Fury asked.

“Thor’s brother Loki, god of mischief and lies, tried to usurp the throne while Thor was grounded. He sent the Destroyer to assassinate Thor and secure the line of succession. Thor’s friends -- Fandral, Volstag, Hogunn, and Sif -- helped him defend the town while he was in a weakened state. Not that he was weak compared to us, their biology has to have something going on. He made STRIKE look like mall cops.”

“I want that footage,” Fury said. “For training purposes.”

“Of course, sir,” Phil agreed mildly. “Thor chose to sacrifice himself to protect the town when it became clear neither his friends nor our team could stop that thing. That earned his way out of time out, and with the hammer… let’s say I know why he was considered weakened.”

Fury nodded and put out glasses, indicating the officially on the record part of the meeting was over. He poured them each a finger of whiskey. “Barton’s unofficial report said I should ask you about the lady who dances the whiskey tango foxtrot.”

“Darcy Lewis,” Phil said with a nod. “She doesn’t add up, sir. Twenty four, on course to graduate in May with a Masters of Political Science from Culver University. Third degree blackbelt in judo, hasn’t competed since she entered her post grad, but she’s not rusty in the least and the tape on my ribs proves it. Recently hospitalized at a psychiatric care facility, she’s now interning with an astrophysicist for the remaining six elective credits she needs to graduate.”

“Interesting partnership,” Fury mused.

“Interesting women,” Phil said. “Barton said she’s served in a hot zone, with a leadership role. Recently bereaved, except nobody connected to her on paper has died recently, and her school schedule didn’t have room for any sort of social life. She’s good with people, but it’s not like she’s a natural extrovert… in fact both Barton and I think she’s more like Romanova.”

“An alias?” Fury asked. A backstopped identity would include things to explain away skillsets, and depending on the goal, could get overfull to tempt a target. He still hadn’t lived down the timeline foul up on Rushman’s theoretical modeling career.

“It would have to be the best one I’ve ever seen,” Phil told him. “We found pictures of her from the first time she went to State championships, at 14. Her father is a well known historian, I’ve read his work, and he dedicated his first book to her, in ‘99. She’s a real person, or someone is doing the impossible.”

<^>

Bucky overheard Darcy as he retched up a pill silently into his palm to toss later. They made the world fuzzy and kept him from reaching the part of his mind where he knew who he was. They were trying to break him, and only focusing on Darcy made the brainwashing bearable.

They were trying hypnosis, again. To fight it, he thought of her and got a flash of an image of a giant robot-thing off the pulps destroying a town. He shot upright, breathing hard.

“We will try again tomorrow, da?”

“Da. Spasibo.”

That night, he reached for her again, trying to find her. A handsome blonde who was not Steve was kissing her hand.

“Thanks, Fandral, but I don’t think I’m ready.”

“Of course, Lady Darcy. Asgardians live many years, when you have recovered from your heartbreak, you need but tell Heimdall to request me.”

_ Hands off my dame, pally. Even with one arm I’ll kick your ass. _

_ Bite your knee-caps off! _ Darcy thought in a silly British accent.

_ What? Darcy? DARCY! _

If War was worse than Hell, then this was worse than War. At least then he could talk to her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Regi patriaeque fidelis: Faithful to king and country, the motto of the 4th Canadian Motorcycle Regiment.  
> Rock-em-sock-em robot: a game where two small robot puppets are pitted against each other in a boxing match.  
> Mall cops: paid but not particularly skilled security forces employed by malls to stop theft.  
> Whiskey tango foxtrot: military code for W T and F, or WTF (what the fuck). Tango and foxtrot are both dances.
> 
> Notes:  
> Red sky at morning, sailors take warning is an old mnemonic for when the tides were likely to rise and cause storms. Red_Skyes is Skye, currently a hacker with the Rising Tide.
> 
> Osiris was the Egyptian God of the Dead, who was torn into 14 pieces and scattered by Set, his evil brother and restored by his wife Isis. Set was pissed by that, so he did it again and fed Osiris's penis to a fish, so when Isis tried to restore him, he was unfinished, and she had to make a prosthetic dick of wood so he could impregnate her before going to the underworld. I could not make this shit up if I tried, and that is why he is pictured as both mummified and erect in the junk. He has a prosthetic dick.
> 
> At least in the US we have the saying "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." this is what Darcy is referencing. Hell, the word, was in fact borrowed from Hel, the Norse Goddess of the Dead. In the Eddas, Hel is the daughter of Loki.   
>  In MCU canon, Hela is the Goddess of Helheim and the daughter of Odin (and presumably Karnilla the Norn Queen like in the comics). In Bodies-verse, Hela was found by Loki, cursed and amnesiac, and he took care of her in secret until Odin discovered this and he was cut off from her. Thor only knows of Helheim in the context of dead mortal souls and Loki getting severely punished for messing with it.
> 
> During a cold read like Coulson does, testing names to see if you get a reaction, you can get reactions off being right, or off being totally wrong if the person thinks you're not a threat (i.e. dismissive micro expressions).
> 
> Clint's father and brother are alcoholics, and Clint himself has a very tense relationship with alcohol and bars. When Coulson is his primary handler on missions, he just avoids both. If he reported to anyone else, he'd muscle through, but Coulson prefers not exhausting a resource and trusts Clint to find a viable alternative.
> 
> Hello side characteritus... Stan the guy with the armored truck served in WWII with the 4th Canadian Motorcycle Regiment and knew Logan. He heard All the Stories about the various Special People (including Cap and the Howlies, but not limited to them) and is decidedly less than fazed by the Destroyer.
> 
> Fury and Coulson's conversation also will make more sense when certain things about SHIELD are explained.
> 
> Darcy's random line about kneecaps is taken from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when the Black Knight has had his arms and legs cut off and is hopping after Arthur, telling him to come back and fight because the knight will bite his kneecaps. It is prompted by Bucky's thought about fighting one armed, and is subconscious


	19. Search and Rescue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy goes looking for her boys, and she finds one of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mostly new chapter alert!

Darcy was a woman on a mission.

Thor’s friend Fandral had used some Asgardian mind magic shit they used on warriors with god-PTSD, and inadvertently informed her the link was still open. Or open-ish. He said one was trapped in slumber, but the other was blocked by something else. He offered to take her to Asgard to better study it, but she wasn’t ready to go so far from her boys now that she knew they were alive.

When Thor didn’t come back, Jane started to crumple. Darcy gave her a time limit on wallowing, and Jane loopholed it by investing in her work with renewed vigor and a new direction, namely, tracking down Thor.

It wasn’t much of a question, the two of them working together to track their wayward menfolk. All they had to do was let Eric know what was happening. Not that he hadn’t put some of it together, more than Darcy was fully comfortable with, really. If he could spot it… what could the highly trained spy agents do?

That concern was part of why he took the job the jackboots offered. He wanted to distract them from her little slip. She got one email from Selvig after SHIELD recruited him that held only a jpeg of a sketch of a blue cube, and the word ‘Familiar?’ in it. 

_ Shit, that thing is evil. _

She shot back an email that was 90% ramble containing a request to keep her updated on how Tess was doing, and a phone number that was actually latitude and longitude for ‘my friend SAM, from Lieutenant Lunchbox’. She hoped Eric would get it to Coulson, he was in a better place to go looking for Steve than she was and she still needed to locate Bucky.

Jane drove herself, and now, Darcy was right beside her. Every once in a while, when the patterns stopped making sense, in the stars or the past, one would call “SWITCH” and they’d look at each other’s problems. Jane gave her algorithms to calculate possible instances of mental Einstein-Rosen bridge use, and she gave Jane information on past incidences of Bifrost usage. Puente Antiguo meant ‘old bridge’, so Darcy thought it was likely other bridge-named spots with no bridge anywhere might be landing zones.

Darcy finally got Bucky on her link on a highway to Endless Bridge, Oklahoma on March 18. It felt like a miracle until she saw through his eyes.

He was in a lab, one rocking a Hydra Chic aesthetic. Dark walls, industrial fixtures, harsh lighting, no heat whatsoever. His mouth was dry. He was missing an arm.

_ Darcy? _

_ There you are, _ she sent with a grin. _ I’ve been looking for you since New Mexico. You need to get functional, fast. Steve flew a plane into the Arctic, and I know I’m not in the right when to save him. _

_ WHAT!?! _

_ I KNOW!  _ Darcy giggled, pure joy at being able to touch the mind of someone she thought she’d lost.  _ I tracked his descent vectors, I have a reasonably good idea where the idiot is. I just need someone to go thaw him out before he dies. _

_ I love Steve, but if he survived, I’m gonna kill him. _

_ Leave some for me, _ she told him.

_ As you wish, _ Bucky said, and she wondered… did he really mean it?

<^>

Bucky wasn’t hesitant to reach out for Darcy when they dragged him to the newest way they had thought up to control him. He needed her. The drugs made him woozy, the hypnosis sometimes worked, and he was too weak from the surgery to affix the replacement arm to fight back alone. It was easy to admit his own weaknesses. She was in there with him, she knew. And he knew she wouldn’t judge or blame him for them. In fact, it was like she had been holding out a hand on the dance floor waiting for him to take it and give her a spin. 

_ Doll, I’m scared. _

_ I’ve got you, _ she said.  _ I’ve done this before, remember? When Steve got serumed, I was there, and I helped him. _

_ You ended up in the hospital, Doll. Not super pleased with that plan. _

_ It’s different this time, I’m prepared. Jane’s friend sent us a painkiller that doesn’t affect the swaps. I’m doped to the gills, I shouldn’t feel more than mild soreness from muscle contractions. I’m just glad we were able to goad him into bragging about how his machine works. _

The doctor running this experiment was an idiot. He saw Bucky’s helplessness and thought it was the total of who he was. Thought Bucky wouldn’t fight back, just because it was hopeless. As fucking if anybody who was friends with Steve Rogers wasn’t acquainted with the idea of fighting a losing battle.

_ If you can’t do something smart, at least do something right,  _ Bucky thought as they showed him the chair. They fitted a mouthguard in between his teeth and he could feel something similar on Darcy’s side. He sat in what was at once a hard medical monstrosity and a cushiony pillow of support.

_ Aim to misbehave, _ Darcy agreed.  _ I’ll split the pain, half and half, but it will hurt. The electrical impulses will make you forget things, so pass any memories you need to keep to me. You’ll be suggestible after, but I can shield you a little, although I shouldn’t try a full swap until we know how the link will handle this. _

He packed the core of who he was into a mental box. It wasn’t much different than what he did to prepare to snipe. The different part was handing the box to Darcy, and for a moment he saw her memories too. He saw, he felt, the pain of the Vita Ray light, the light dripping like splattered blood the color of gold. Bucky felt her sensation of taking his memories into her mind, a strange heaviness.

Then a pair of metal pads were brought onto his temples and there was pain. It pooled in his head and drained into a left arm that no longer existed, a phantom ache in long missing fingers. He flexed them and met resistance as Darcy let him squeeze a rubber bag of sand in her left hand. The same golden light spilled off Darcy’s memory and into his field of vision, obscuring the lab in a drench of bloody honey. They were both panting from strain with their mouthguards were removed. His with a perfunctory yank, hers with Jane’s gentle fingers and a wet wipe for the drool.

“Ty Zimniy Soldat,” said a man.  _ You are the Winter Soldier, _ Bucky supplied.  _ They made me learn Russian. _

_ Cool. I don’t, I took Spanish. Play along, I’ll learn Russian so I can help better. _

“Da.

“Ty moi oruzhiye.”

“Da.”  _ I’m not his weapon, am I? _

_ No. You’re a person, I have dibs. This guy is an ass and you owe him nothing. _

“Eto missiya. Vy budete vypolnyat'. Ponimayete?” 

_ The folder is a mission. He wants me to comply. _

_ There are lots of ways to comply. Not all of them will be bad. I’m here. _

“Da. Ya ponimayu.”

The mission was a simple sniping job. A political enemy, one they needed dead. He set up in the perch they gave him, a building undergoing renovations. He went through the motions, and when it was time to fire, Darcy arrived.

_ They gave you an easy one to start off with, _ she commented.  _ Not even morally wrong. This asshole is big in the sex trade, kidnapping and selling young girls to the highest bidder as toys. _

_ Can I really kill for them? _

_ James,  _ she said, and he knew it was serious.  _ As a woman, trust me when I say every rapist alive wants to hurt people. A dead rapist can’t hurt anyone. Every rapist you kill protects people. If you can’t do it, I most certainly can and will. _

The idea of Darcy with blood on her hands made his heart hurt. He shoved her away from the link so she wouldn’t see this.

He pulled the trigger.

The handlers praised him, and his food was hot, not cold. It still tasted like ashes and blood.

<^>

The next time Darcy made contact with Bucky, she had a plan.

_ I know where Morita is, _ she said. Based on the clothes she’d seen and the general Cold War vibe of the assassination, she’d narrowed the timeline. Monty was under twenty types of security, what with being a noble in a country that still did that. Dernier moved around a lot until ‘68. Dugan vanished off the radar for ten years, then cropped up in the earliest version of SHIELD. Gabe finished his degree at Howard and joined a bunch of civil rights groups, which put him on enough watch lists that couch-surfing was the mature choice. Morita on the other hand… he’d gotten married and settled down until 88. His address then wasn’t easy to find, but Darcy was a damn good researcher, and her friend Jenny had helped, back when they still talked. It hurt to drift away from her friend, but with different universities in different time zones, and the whole War thing… it happened.

_ I’m pretty sure I can’t get to Fresno, _ Bucky pointed out.

_ You don’t have to. Mail still works just fine, and I have a nice big list of successful defectors. What’s the year? _

  1. _Took ‘em a while to fix me up and longer to break me again._



_ Try to get some privacy on your next mission, and a pen and paper. Write two letters. One to  _ _ Kovács Nóra at the Budapest State Opera. Let her know she’ll be in East Berlin in May of next year, and there’s a train station under the hotel they’ll be at. Ask her to mail the second letter. That one is to Morita. Tell him where you are, and tell him where Steve is. He’s alive, but sleeping, probably cryofreeze. _

_ I’ll do my best. What’s his address? _

_ 2894 Huntington Boulevard, Fresno California. _

_ I love you Darcy. _

Her heart stuttered.

_ Steve…. _ She started.

_ He knows. He loves you too, if he’s been too chicken to say it. We’re not asking you to choose, Darcy. Odds are good neither of us will make it to you, so it’d be dumb to put you in that position when we can just love you to the best of our ability given the situation. I just want to be honest while I can. _

_ I love you too. And Steve. And I’m going to find some way to make this work, so just hold on. _

“Soldat, vy gotovy podchinit'sya?” said an officer, interrupting the pleasant warmth of their moment. Darcy felt salty about that, but playing along got her closer to her boys.

“Da,” Bucky said and then a door shut between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Tess: the Tessaract   
> SAM: acronym of Secret Agent Man  
> Ty Zimniy Soldat: You are the Winter Soldier (Russian)  
> Da: Yes (Russian)  
> Ty moi oruzhiye: You are my weapon (Russian)  
> Eto missiya. Vy budete vypolnyat'. Ponimayete?: This is the mission. You will comply. Understand? (Russian)  
> Ya ponimayu: I understand (Russian)  
> Soldat, vy gotovy podchinit'sya?: Soldier, are you ready to comply?
> 
> Notes:  
> There wasn't a ton of time after the fight to have a conversation, so I'm altering the timeline that the fight began after they all had breakfast together and Fandral noticed signs Darcy Was Not Okay. So there was enough time to let her know about the open links, but not enough to do anything.
> 
> "If you can’t do something smart, at least do something right" and "Aim to misbehave" are references to Firefly.
> 
> Bucky is facing his first instance of moral injury. He doesn't want to think of himself as an assassin yet, he's not comfortable with killing someone who isn't trying to kill him. Darcy is not facing moral injury at this juncture, because she's got a very firm feeling about the human trafficking the target does and wants him dead, however, Bucky still doesn't think of her as a killer either so he takes the shot rather than let her do it for him.
> 
> Dugan was a circus strongman before the War, and after the war spent some time sweeping Europe trying to help any Very Special People (mutants or others with odd abilities) find their way to his home circus rather than get picked off in the post war chaos. That's why he had no record of address until SHIELD was founded.
> 
> The defector Darcy tells Bucky to contact was a real person who actually defected using a defunct subway tunnel under her hotel.


	20. Giving 110%

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy and Bucky fight the Cold War. Good thing they have allies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter alert!

The War had been rough. What Bucky was going through was worse in some ways and easier in others. In the War they’d only been called on to kill Hydra, a clear and present danger to everyone. They fought openly, honestly, they never had to lie about who they were or what they wanted, except for the way her own presence was quietly left out of the paperwork. Bucky was being called on to kill for evil men, to lie for them and to them. He was being systematically stripped of every innocence he had, every scrap of self she couldn’t save, and even those, they had to pretend he’d lost.

On the better side, on some missions, they were able to remove targets by warning them to run and never look back. Especially families. Any time Bucky was sent to kill kids, they managed to work together to convince the parents to take the children and go. Darcy had him send letters with them, vague enough to pass a cursory glance by the unwilling couriers, but filled with information the Howlies needed. She wouldn’t leave her men behind, time or no time.

They made what they had work, although he always pushed her away before the rough stuff. He had the painkillers for when he was strapped into shock devices intended to destroy memory, and she had Jane.

Jane volunteered to force-feed Darcy pop-tarts and handle the ‘stay alive stuff’ for her. Something about turnabout being fair play, according to Jane. Darcy thought Jane just wanted not to focus on the complete lack of Thor. She didn’t blame her friend in the least, she had thrown herself at keeping Jane functional to prove she could exist without her men, her beloved Brooklyn boys. She’d proved that, but she’d also learned the difference between can and should. She could, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed it, and she had never felt avoidable pain was a thing she should accept easily.

Fleming77 helped a lot. The bio-feedback training devices they sent let her figure out how to initiate a swap, and in time, how to narrow down when she was swapping to. They also regularly checked her for brain damage, but they didn’t find what they were expecting.

“These numbers don’t make sense,” Jane said for the third time that day.

“I don’t know for numbers, but talk it out, Boss Lady,” Darcy offered.

“The energy readings from your swaps… it’s inconsistent. Sometimes it’s lower than others, but the weird thing is you show _ fewer _ indicators of strain on the high energy swaps. Add to that I can’t tell where the extra energy is coming from, and this whole thing is a knot.”

“Less strain is good, though, right? It means less pudding brain for Darcy,” she said, trying to put a smile on Jane’s face. “Mmm, pudding.”

“Yeah, and that’s weird too, but that’s a Fleming problem so I’m not as bothered,” Jane said with a hand wave. “A normal human’s brain would be going puddingy by now with the number of reported swaps and estimated average energy. Some can be chalked up to your mutation protecting you, and the way you built up the tolerance slowly as a child, but not all of it. If our calculations were correct, you would have become a vegetable on the flight to New Mexico or the swap before. You clearly aren’t, so something is off in our calculations. We just can’t find it.”

“If you can’t find the mistake, maybe there isn’t one?” Darcy said. “You’re really smart, Jane. Like, major super genius levels of smart. If you say the math is right, I believe you, but there’s more to me than math.”

Jane looked confused.

“This is a… I don’t think I count as a normal person anymore, but I had sixteen years experience at it and I think this is a case of a blindspot for normal people things. For you, math is absolutes, that’s why you like it, it doesn’t shift on you. But people aren’t math, they can’t be reduced down to any numbers that make sense.” Darcy sighed. “I do judo. I haven’t competed in years, but I stay in practice. Our math would drive you batty. We’re always talking about giving 110 percent, about doing as much as you can and then one more. Digging deep, because it’s when humans are pushed to their limit, back to a cliff, that they become more than they were.”

“Darcy, you can’t give more than 100 percent of any given thing, that’s literally the whole thing,” Jane said, giving her an odd look.

“Except I _have_ ,” Darcy said gently. “When Steve got the serum, I was pushed to my limit. It hurt  _ so _ bad, but I had to protect him. I had to, Jane, there was no room for any other option there. I was already maxed out, full capacity, 100 percent given, and it wasn’t enough. We were  _ both _ going to die in that chamber if I didn’t do something, so I did. I gave 110 percent. It wasn’t some secret reserve I’d been holding back, it was gritting my teeth and doing the impossible because anything else was unthinkable.”

“I… that makes no sense!” Jane wailed. Darcy rubbed her back in soothing circles.

“That’s humanity for ya,” Darcy said. “We’re fucking weird, but that’s why I like us.”

<^>

“Winter Soldier!” said Dr. Pchelintsov with a good cheer that would put anyone sane on edge. “So good to see you again, eh? Tell me, how long have we been working together?”

“As long as I can recall,” Bucky answered drily. He wouldn’t risk that much inflection with the other handlers, but Pchelintsov preferred him ‘lively’. Thought it represented greater success of his methods.

“Ah, yes, your unfortunate amnesia,” the doctor said with a conciliatory nod. “I have great hope that we are quite close to solving the mysteries of your mind. In the meantime, we have done great work together. Protected the people from dangerous subversives, fought the tyrannical capitalist forces of the West… you are a hero, my friend. And when this is all over, you will have a statue in every city.”

“When is it over?” he asked, looking at his hands. One cold unfeeling steel, one he couldn’t ever seem to get the blood off, like the hand of Lady Macbeth. “When do we rest?”

“Soon, Soldier, soon there will be peace,” Pchelintsov promised. “And! You will no longer have to work alone. Meet Laynia Petrovna, come girl, no need to be shy.”

A tall blonde woman entered the room, her back straight and her shoulders set like she was facing a monster in its den.  _ Not an unfair comparison _ , Bucky thought.

“Good day, Soldier,” she said.

“Laynia here is helping us with a project, resurrecting an old idea and giving it a new chance. An elite school for agents. Imagine, another thirty with your skill… we will win in no time, and enjoy our retirement in peace and plenty. The two of you will be instructors together. Of course, this does mean your active missions will be limited, but this just means more time to work on your little… problem, eh?”

“The original school used only girl children,” Laynia explained. “I was once a graduate, as was my older sister. They thought girls would be more bidable. This new school will use boys.”

“Mm,” Bucky hummed, before he could stop himself. Laynia cocked a brow in question. “Stick to girls. If I’m to pick thirty agents to back me up on a mission, I’d prefer women.”

“And why is that,” she asked, tone sharpening like a knife’s edge. Bucky held his hands up in surrender.

“Peace, I swear I have no sordid intent. I would want women agents for purely practical reasons. Namely, the female of the species is more deadly than the male.”

“I don’t meet that attitude often, Soldier,” she said with a warming appraisal. Her posture shifted and Bucky shot her a grin.

“You don’t need to be so formal,” he said. “We’re partners, right? Call me Winter.”

Late that night, Bucky tossed and turned, worried.

_ What’s going on? We aren’t scheduled for another meet for a month,  _ Darcy asked.

_ I have a new mission, it’s good, and bad.  _ He sighed.  _ They’re going to train children as agents. They want me to teach them. I won’t have as many assassinations, but… _

_ But children,  _ Darcy agreed.  _ Wow. I’m awfully young to be a mom. _

_ What? _

_ You can’t exactly tell them no, Bucky. You have to do this, we may as well take the brunt of the damage off and try to be parents in a place that won’t have them. _

_ What did I do to deserve you, Doll?  _ Bucky sighed again.  _ And… the other trainer, she… well she’s a she. _

_ Did I somehow get switched to Steve mid link?  _ Darcy asked with a laugh.  _ You’re good with women, remember? Just be your usual charming self, only safely Soviet-ified. _

_ But you... and Steve…. I can’t tell her I’m seeing someone, neither of you are here and I’m not supposed to remember anything before 1952. _

_ You said you didn’t want to make me choose because I might never see you in person. That it wasn’t fair to expect me to limit my love. _ Darcy caressed him through the link, a warm shiver in his mind that brought comfort to his heart. _ How much more fair is it to tell you not to flirt? I’ve loved Steve since I was eighteen, I can pinpoint the day. You… snuck up on me, but it was around the same time. I’m also not a virgin. I didn’t date much because I was always busy, but I can’t hold you to a standard I didn’t hold myself to. _

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered into the darkness. It would be noted and likely his schedule of medications and electric shocks would be increased, but some things felt truer when said aloud.

_ I’m not telling you to do something you aren’t comfortable with. I’m just saying… when you’re with me, you’re WITH me, in ways I know for a fact you don’t have with anyone else. Do what you have to so you can live. _ The link sharpened like a glare.  _ Not just failing to die, Buck. You know the difference. Failing to die is the minimum bar, but I also want you living if you can. _

_ Thanks, Darcy. Now go rest. I have the watch. _

<^>

Laynia didn’t know what to think of her partner. They worked well together, he was focused and a hard worker. He didn’t stare at her breasts or ass or insist she do the administrative tasks. If anything he was painfully polite and professional. He stuck so closely to the letter of the law that she was starting to suspect something was up, in fact. Everyone had their vices, Soviet bureaucracy ran on a steady flow of hypocrisy and corruption. Winter was… too  _ clean. _

“Cigarette?” she offered as they took a break from finalizing the arrangements for training space. It would all still have to be approved by the department funding them and the party leaders protecting the program, but they hoped if they gave a full enough wishlist of “necessities” they would get something they could work with.

“Yes, please,” he said, taking it. He didn’t light it, just smelled the little paper stick. His eyes drifted shut and a soft smile lit his face. He tucked the cigarette in his breast pocket and gave her a wry smile. “I don’t smoke, but I like the smell. It feels like a memory, and I don’t have many of those.”

“Yes, your amnesia,” she nodded. “Is it getting better?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I’ll remember things… but no context. Sometimes that’s good… how to field strip a rifle. Sometimes that’s bad….”

“Like banned poetry?” she asked, quirking a brow. “It felt like a quote, so I looked it up. When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride, he shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside. But the she-bear thus accosted, rends the peasant tooth and nail, for the female of the species is more deadly than the male. Rudyard Kipling, the bard of imperialism.”

“I hope you didn’t get in trouble looking that up,” Winter said with a sigh.

“I am a very talented spy, Sir. I never get in trouble for looking things up.” She raked her eyes over him. He wasn’t unattractive, metal arm aside. “If you ever want me to look something up for you… you know where to find me.”

“Thank you, Laynia.” He patted her shoulder. “You’re a good friend.”

_ Oh, that’s what he’s hiding, _ she thought. What a shame for a handsome man like that to be bent for other men. Although picturing that… might make Moscow winters a little warmer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:  
> Jane is bothered by the idea her friend may go pudding-brained from the swaps, but she knows she can't fix that and thus it's not on her pile of active worry. This distinction is part of why people think Jane is cold or unfeeling when that couldn't be farther from the truth.
> 
> The flight to New Mexico included two swaps, so the window of when Darcy should have maxed out is either during/after the swap before Bucky fell, during/after Bucky's fall, or during/after Steve's crash. Any of these would have left the boys alive long enough to die as planned, so this meshes with the history she thought she was preserving.
> 
> Pchelintsov was a comic book canon character, one of the scientists who helped brainwash and subvert Bucky into the Winter Soldier. He specialized in less aggressive subversion techniques and thought he was better to Bucky than the "brutes" who beat him, even though what Pchelintsov did was arguably far worse.
> 
> Laynia Petrovna was also a comic book character and Soviet Superhero codenamed Darkstar. Here she's a graduate of the same Widow program that produced Dottie Underwood from Agent Carter, which was scrapped after Peggy uncovered them.
> 
> For clarity, Darcy isn't biologically all that young to have kids, but she is experiencing the universal hyperventilating fear of not being ready common to all new moms.
> 
> Rudyard Kipling's work was banned in the USSR for being rabidly pro-Imperialism, specifically British Imperialism.
> 
> Laynia reads Bucky's lack of reaction to her flirting as lack of attraction to women because she's been well trained from a young age to get men attracted to her, and she has no idea he's not interested because he has someone.


	21. Prices and Sacrifices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Cold War keeps getting colder, keeps taking more. As the price mounts, every ally will be needed in Darcy's fight for Bucky's soul.

When Darcy came to anchor Bucky his mind was strange. Soft and fractured, like wax in a lava lamp. Soft golden light ringed his vision as she slipped beside him and tried to hold him solid.

“Zima? Ty v poryadke?” asked a concerned looking woman with long blonde hair in a braid to her waist.

_ What’s she saying?  _ Darcy asked.

“Laynia bespokoitsya obo mne,” Bucky mumbled, although Darcy couldn’t understand Russian when he spoke it out loud. She was crashing through every single Russian language learning program she could, but it was a complex language to learn in three months.

“YA! _Eto_ novoye lecheniye?” the woman said, fury sparking in her eyes.

_ Still don’t speak Russian, Bucky. _

_ Sorry Dollface. Laynia is worried, the new ‘treatment’ is stronger. They added something on my eye. Flashes of light and color. They did it early. You weren’t there, but I didn’t want to call, I know it hurts you. _

_ I’m so sorry, Bucky. Here, take what you need.  _ She opened the box in her mind, the one filled with Bucky. His memories, her memories, everything that was who he was. She poured him back into his head. She felt him shake under the new weight settling on fried nerves. The floating bits pulled together more solidly and the gold aura dissipated.

The woman was still ranting, and Darcy felt a kinship with her, despite only catching a few words in the angry Russian invective.

“Laynia, peace,” Bucky said, in Russian, but with an undercurrent in his mind for her. Like subtitles. It helped her learn faster, but she didn’t want to strain him by linking too often. That CAT scan with the small dark spot still gave her nightmares. Not of losing her own mind, but of her boys being hurt. Especially with the risks Bucky had to take, letting them use the Chair.

“I will not just sit by and let them hurt you like this! If the Doctor knew…” Darcy sent Bucky a warm smile, since he was translating Laynia’s words too.

“The Doctor knows,” Bucky said. “That’s the point. You can’t let them know… you have to pretend this is normal, that you don’t see their lies, or they’ll hurt you too.”

“You’re pretending to think this… torture, is for your own good?”

“It  _ is _ for my own good. I  _ like  _ not being dead,” Bucky said drily. “If I recover my memories, I’m a threat to them. You know how they handle threats. This is the price of not dying, and I’ll pay it. I’ve paid worse, you know that. You’ve seen my file.”

“O, moya lyubimaya Zima, kak ty stradayesh,” she said and wrapped Bucky in a hug that put his face against her breasts. Darcy chuckled.

_ My Russian isn’t good, but I know the words ‘my beloved’. _

_ Shush, I haven’t done anything. She’s a friend. This is a platonic hug. _

_ So you don’t mind if I just enjoy the boob-squish? _

Bucky pushed her out of the link with an embarrassed flush of heat.

<^>

Steve flickered, his mind made of snapshots of computer screens analyzing the immediate time after the War, analyzing the history of places he’d never heard of, books of Norse mythology and complex math. He called out, but never got to her, to his Angel, his Darcy. It was a nightmare.

He saw Bucky too, sometimes. It was far worse than the glimpses of hope, those things. Maybe the priests had been right, maybe they had sinned bad enough to go to Hell, but that would make Darcy wrong and he wasn’t ready to accept that yet. He told himself it was only a nightmare and tried to sleep more. 

He felt bad, leaving Darcy, but she had her own life, he’d always known he was just a stepping stone for her, a thing to do and then move on to change the world in her own right. She’d talked about a negro president to Bucky once, maybe she could be a female president, President Lewis, he liked the sound of it, even though the thought of someone who wasn’t Bucky or him being the First Fella burned him. 

She didn’t need an impotent guardian angel. And he couldn’t take the thought it was real, that Bucky lived and was hurting, despite Darcy’s relayed warning from Dugan. Even that was more pain than hope, Dugan dead at Bucky’s hands. God, Bucky would rather die than hurt his men, he was a fantastic leader, respected well before Steve even got to Europe. It had been Bucky’s pull that got people to trust “the asshole in the tights”. 

Steve wished Darcy well, and before she could do more than say his name, he pushed himself into the darkness and slept.

_ Steve you utter asshole, wake the hell up, I need to talk. _

_ I’m sorry, Darcy. _

_ Don’t be sorry, be useful. We have a problem. _

_ I can’t help, Angel. I’m dead. _

_ Only mostly, which is partly alive. _

_ Nope, go through my pockets and look for loose change. _

_ You’re an ass. Call me when you aren’t wallowing. _

He slipped into darkness. 

Wait. 

That wasn’t a phantom he thought up, or a trick. He knew that mind, the touch of it, he knew that better than his own name. That was Darcy.

_ DARCY! _

_ About time, I have been dealing with our brainwashed buddy and his crappy attitude towards letting me help for too long and we needed you. You are reckless, pigheaded, and lack all sense of self preservation, but you know him like I don’t. I need some memories of him. He’s slipping, and I only have what we shared via swaps. He needs a stronger anchor to who he is. _

Even without a full explanation, Steve knew what she needed. The link made parts of language unnecessary, even if they still used it. He knew Bucky was being tortured, that those fears were true, but he also knew Darcy was there. Their guardian Angel, and she was asking him for help, for memories. Steve sent her his strongest memories of Bucky, real, vivid. Like all his memories were, the serum having turned a good memory into a tortuously perfect one.

_ Wow, ok, that was a little more graphic than I had thought, but sure, thanks, this will help him. Uh, you know how we said I love you to each other? _

_ Before I put the plane in the water, I remember. _

_ Bucky and I did too. While you were wallowing. Or napping, I’m not sure, but it’s been almost six months since I lost you both and you don’t surface as often. _

_ We both knew we loved you. It’s alright, Doll, we’ll figure it out. _

_ He said I didn't have to choose because you thought you weren’t going to make it to me. I decided I’m choosing anyway, and I’m choosing both of you. _ Darcy gave him a tight, warm hug along the link, shaking off the ever present cold for a moment.  _ You survived this long. You will survive to meet me, and I am never letting you go after that. We are going to get through this together, and save Bucky, and live happily ever after. Got it? _

_ Yes, Ma’am. _

_ No more wallowing? _

_ No, Ma’am. _

_ It’s weird when you’re obedient. I could get used to it though, _ she said, and the link dimmed out.

<^>

Zima got out of bed. Then he made it up, pulling the sheets into tight corners on the mat that softened the metal bench enough to ensure he wasn’t damaged in sleep. He dressed with swift, efficient motions, every article of clothing neatly tucked in place. He ran his flesh hand through his hair. It was getting long again, an awkward length that didn’t pull into a neat style easily. Unless they sent him on another mission soon, he would have to ask Laynia about how to style long hair.

He proceeded to the courtyard, where the barely risen sun was painting the fresh snow of the night with gold. His charges were already lined up for inspection in neat uniforms of olive green with red piping. In deference to the temperature, the uniforms were wool, and the lower half was trousers, not skirts.

He waited for Laynia to arrive with the thick red folder of individual assignments before beginning the roll call. He called each girl up by number, and inspected her uniform, making sure all was in place. Then Laynia handed them their assignment, and they returned to the rows.

“Fix this button tonight, Twenty Eight,” he said, voice neutral. “It will be too loose by tomorrow.”

“Yes sir,” Twenty Eight said with a soft sigh of a smile up at him. He nodded and let Laynia hand her the last packet of instructions. Zima looked at Laynia with something that could be curiosity. She gave him a slight stiffening of her brows in return. Later then.

When later came, Laynia had snuck into his room.

“You’ll get in trouble,” he said, straightening his hair again.

“Please, they would love it if I seduced you. One more tether on both of us. I know better, though. But for both our sakes, I think they should believe that is what’s happening.” She produced a small bottle of amber fluid. He took a sip, rolling the sweet honey notes over his tongue and savoring the smokey aftertaste.

“What’s really happening, then?” he asked. “I know I had a treatment recently, but I do remember we had thirty, yes?”

“Trainees Nineteen and Twenty, the twins,” she said with a pained look. “They were requested by another program, and the request was granted. It’s why you were given the most recent treatment.”

“I had an episode, didn’t I?” he asked, looking at his metal hand. He knew he could be volatile, dangerous, if he didn’t get treatments often enough. The thought of hurting his charges, of hurting Laynia… it made him sick.

Laynia scoffed. “You had what they called an episode, but I would have done the same, if I thought anything would come of it. The only difference between your outbursts and mine is volume… I keep my rebellions quiet.”

“That’s dangerous talk, Layka,” he said with a frown. She shrugged, blonde hair bouncing, and laid her head on his shoulder. Some distant part of him remembered a small blond head on his shoulder as worry roiled through his gut. “What did you do?”

“I found out where they were sent, and I’m compromising a guard there on my off days. He won me a bear at the carnival shooting gallery.” She smiled, bright and mischievous and the Soldier wondered if her eyes had always been green, or if they shouldn’t be the blue of clear and open sky, of freedom. “Our girls will have a protector, even if it can’t be us, Zimichka.”

“You don’t know how to walk away from a fight, do ya, pal?” he asked absentmindedly. Laynia stiffened beside him.

“Zima?” she asked. Her look worried him, a tight ball of anxious fear, immediately met with soothing honey from a corner of his mind that made his body ache with longing for something he couldn’t name.

“I think I’m having an episode,” he said clearly, keeping his voice calm. “Get the doctors.”

“You are not having an episode and do you know what two treatments so close will do to you? No, I am not getting you a doctor.” 

He tried to leave to get one himself, but she tangled her legs in his and pinned him to the ground. Her feet pulled his legs apart painfully and when he moved to shout, she pressed his face into her breasts and yanked them both upwards, strangling his voice with compression of his diaphragm. He struggled to escape, reaching deep into the well that sometimes produced valuable fighting skills with no memory of learning.

_ Bucky, what the fuck? Why is Platonic Boobs leg locking you? _

_ Help! _

_ I’m pretty sure Platonic Boobs has a reason for using the tate shiho hiza hishigi. What was it? _

_ I was having an episode, and she doesn’t want me seeing the doctors. Now HELP. _

_ Always, _ said the voice in the Soldier’s head.

His body went lax and he blinked. He was in a small room, on a chair shaped like a dish, and a thin brunette was looking at him with curiosity and concern. He shook his head and tried to get back to where he belonged. When he did, it was like he was watching a film, watery yellow light tingeing the screen that should be his own vision. As his hands slapped the ground twice without him intending to move them, he heard himself laugh.

“A win by Ippon,” his voice said and it didn’t feel like him. Laynia released him and sat back on her haunches, coiled and ready to strike. Rather than shift to keep fighting himself, his body slowly sat, legs folded under him, hands on knees as he dipped his head and torso in a bow.

“Who are you?” Laynia asked.

“Perceptive,” his voice said admiringly. “I’m the one who defends what they’re trying to kill. You do that too, that makes us allies.”

“Allies are not friends,” Laynia noted. “And you speak English in an American accent.”

“Americans and Russians were once friends,” his voice said. The Solder coughed, a spasm of pain through his chest like being run through. The yellowed film started to tear, a crack of the control of the other entity controlling him. 

“Lyudmilla…. She was a fucking vengeful war goddess with a gun,” he gasped.

“Good. Stay with that memory. She was a friend,” the other explained to Laynia. “He let a lot go this time, and he hasn’t been tagging me in. Is he suicidal?”

“No,” Laynia said. “But he might have been. The treatments do help with  _ that, _ at least. Can’t want to die over what you don’t remember.”

“If he learns it again, will he react the same way?”

Laynia thought, then nodded.

“Then don’t bring it up. Let the thrice damned chair do one good thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Zima? Ty v poryadke?: Winter? Are you alright?  
> Laynia bespokoitsya obo mne: Laynia is worried about me.  
> YA! Eto novoye lecheniye?: I am! This is the new treatment?  
> O, moya lyubimaya Zima, kak ty stradayesh: Oh, my beloved Winter, how you suffer.  
> First Fella: a play on First Lady, the wife of the president. Male spouses of presidents are called First Gentlemen.  
> Layka: a diminutive of Laynia, used by family/close friends.  
> Zimichka: Bucky's name, Zima, already sounds like a diminutive, but Zimichka is more expressly familiar/friendly.  
> Platonic Boobs: Darcy's nickname for Laynia.  
> tate shiho hiza hishigi: Dislocation of Knees in 8th Immobilization  
> Win by Ippon: a win due to technically flawless execution.
> 
> Notes:  
> ECT when preformed medically is currently very safe and only causes short (maybe a month) periods of woozy memory. Part of recovery treatment is making very factual statements to the patient about the memories they lost incidentally. Needless to say, this could possibly be grossly misused. ECT is going out of favor as new, less intense procedures are developed, like TMS, trans-cranial magnetic stimulation, the worst side effect of which is a slight headache.
> 
> The story being sold by the doctors is that the "treatments" (the Chair) are to help Bucky with "mental problems" that make him unstable. He knows it's crap but he pretends to buy it, however his Soldat-self does believe it. Laynia had believed it until she saw the aftermath of the newest iteration of Chair up close, and she's furious at herself for missing the lie being fed her, as well as concerned.
> 
> Laynia cares about Zima, but she also thinks he's gay (and after meeting Darcy possibly mentally ill) so she's not as reserved in her physical affection as she would be if she were trying to avoid an awkward sexual attraction. Bucky is still unpacking his ability to love two people as valid and non-sinful, so it's still awkward for him, especially with Darcy present. Darcy just likes the tactile sensation and getting to tease Bucky.
> 
> Steve was raised in an era where being gay, let alone bi and poly, was considered a sin even if you never acted on it. His faith in Darcy slightly outstripped his faith in someone who damned him before he even got to the goodnight kiss. However, when faced with what has to feel like a living hell... old ideas come back. and he reacts with predictable depression and low self-worth.
> 
> The only mostly dead, which is partly alive, comes from the film The Princess Bride, a beloved classic. In that scene, Miracle Max says there is only one thing you can do with someone who is all dead, which is to go through the pockets and look for loose change.
> 
> You can learn more about judo leg locks, including seeing a picture of the lock Laynia uses here: https://judoinfo.com/leglocks/
> 
> Lyudmilla is the sniper friend Bucky made back at the beginning of the war, Lady Death.


	22. Strengths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New problems require new solutions. Old enemies will require new strengths.

Darcy watched the seventies end, teaching children how to kill. On days when she felt like being kind to herself, she told herself what she was doing was teaching them to survive. The handlers started pushing to include the girls on live missions. Darcy was called in more and more to help stifle the cold and unfeeling persona that was building strength with each wipe. Soldat, the Soldier.

After the wipes, the Soldier was strongest, he was the man the doctors and the generals were trying to build, and despite her efforts, it was working. She got through to Bucky occasionally, although it was easier to get to Zima, the version with Bucky’s kindness and respect and Soldier’s loyalty to Russia. Zima spent the most time in the front, whereas Bucky slept when she wasn’t there to give him his memories. Which is why the insistent tug on the link from Bucky was so unusual.

“What is it?” she hissed in Russian to the pacing Laynia.

“We were given orders… Galyusha isn’t going to cut it as an assassin, she’s too sweet. We’ve been ordered to… remove her.”

“So we remove her,” Darcy said. Laynia froze, and Darcy gave her a sly smile. “She shouldn’t be here anyway, they’re right about that.”

“What you’re suggesting…” Laynia trailed off with a sigh and firmed her shoulders. “You’re right. How? It’s nearly impossible to leave the country, let alone get out of the Union.”

“Can you keep out of sight until the summer games?” Darcy mentally flicked through the events of 1980 in Russia. “I can give you contact information for someone in France, if you can, try to slip out in the French delegation to hitch a ride. They’ll help you, and probably set us up some safehouses if I need to send any of the others after you.”

“I’ll take her, not you?” she asked. Darcy shook Bucky’s head, tucking a stray lock of hair back.

“There’s ten kinds of fucked up shit embedded in him. Dead man’s switches, subliminal post hypnotic triggers, if he didn’t burn through drugs like a five year old burns through pixie sticks, they’d have him addicted to shit too. I can’t pull him until I have the resources to catch him safely.”

Laynia gave her a strange look, but nodded. Darcy fell back.

“You okay?” Jane asked as she handed Darcy a bottle of gatorade. “Bucky was crying on our end and he wouldn’t say why.”

“Yeah, it’s gonna be fine,” Darcy said. “Real fine, not acronym fine. Do you need me or can I drop back and check on how it turned out?”

“You’re good for another hour, then mandatory rest time,” Jane said, checking a spreadsheet they’d worked up for just this purpose. “Tomorrow we’re getting into Kansas City, and you need rest before you deal with that.”

<^>

Steve felt the passing of time in Darcy’s mind when she spoke to him. She was tired, pushing herself. Bucky needed her, and he understood that, from what he saw and what she told him. But Darcy needed him. So he held her mind gently, gave her rest and comfort that should have been, probably was, days to him, in the span of minutes to her. It wasn’t his role, normally. He was the protector, the one who punched the problem until it left people alone, Bucky was the caregiver, the one who patched up bodies and minds. But Bucky couldn’t do that from a cage. So Steve held Darcy when she needed rest, or crying, or screaming, he held her mind in his and wished he could hold her with his arms.

_ When are you guys?  _

_ 84 and 11. It’s not good. _

_ What do you need? _

_ Tell me it will work out. That we’ll find you, and free him and be happy. Lie if you have to. _

_ I don’t like lying, and I don’t know the future. But Darcy, even if all we ever had was this, I’d take it. Besides, don’t swaps end when they no longer need you? We have to believe that’s the one rule we haven’t broken. I still need you, so I must have more work, so I have to get out sometime, right? _

_ Maybe. Grandma’s sick. I’m going to go visit her and I’ll ask. I love you. _

_ I love you too. _

Steve learned a new kind of strength, one of letting another lean on you, of gentle words and hope. He really hoped that this was what Erskine meant, about strong men. He’d spent so much of his life being strong with fists and guts and standing back up and “I could do this all day”, maybe he needed to learn the value of a softer strength. One of open arms and heart and letting people fall onto you, and yes, a little bit of “I could do this all day”, because if that’s what his loves needed, he would.

<^>

Bucky’s missions got harder. Without a partner beside him, he was all the girls had. Darcy helped, but it was always a struggle to reach Darcy after a wipe. Always a fight to get back who he was. He leaned on Darcy when he could. And when he couldn’t, people died, and sometimes his girls had to be the ones to kill them. If they couldn’t, he could predict he would need to smuggle them out, hoping that they could find their way to one of the safehouses.

He watched uniforms change and the program be shuffled under more and more layers of plausible deniability. The old handlers were disavowed and disappeared, and new ones took their place. He let them think he was mindless. In many ways he was. He gave it all to Darcy to keep before a wipe, and trusted she would give back what he needed. They introduced a new tool to control him, a cryogenic tube that let months pass in blinks. Sometimes he would wake in a new place, another sign the program was on the run. Shuffling the assets like peas under shells. He tried to keep track, but it got harder with the fog of defrosting mingled with the ever more frequent wipes.

Then he opened his eyes and saw a thing he hated, viscerally, in a way he could not explain. He called her up.

_ What is that? _

_ Squid-Nazi. What the hell is Hydra doing here? We killed them. What year is it? _

He glanced at the calendar on the technician’s desk. December, 1991.

_ Crap. I know your mission. You’re supposed to assassinate a friend. I think this was their test run for the others. When you are clear of them, I’ll need you to get me to a computer. I’ll stay linked so I don’t lose you, but I need to be able to do stuff on my end. _

“Are you ready to get to work?” asked the handler, who looked like Steve… that was wrong. Not Steve was wrong and saying wrong things. Darcy poured warm golden honey memories of Real Steve into him to combat the soft but insistent voice of the Not Steve.

_ Bucky did you get that? _

“Yes.” He knew she would know it was for her, while letting the Not Steve handler think he was still a puppet. It was hard not to smile. Darcy wouldn’t let him hurt a good person. She’d find a way. She was smart like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Soldat: soldier (Russian). The artificial assassin personality being implanted in Bucky.  
> Zima: Winter (Russian). The natural but new personality that created itself in response to Bucky's trauma.  
> Pixie sticks: a candy that's basically just flavored sugar in a tube, aka crack for kids.
> 
> Notes:  
> While Darcy was mistaken as a Network, a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder, Bucky is actually developing a version of it in reaction to having an artificial personality implanted in him. Most DID comes from trauma, so this isn't unrealistic. Note, please, that the only destructive alter is the one specifically created by Red Room to be that way.
> 
> The summer Olympics in 1980 took place in Moscow and were a large point of weakness when it came to preventing defectors.
> 
> Robert Redford, who played Alexander Pierce, did indeed look a lot like Chris Evans as Steve when he was younger. Creepily so, and probably why he was put in place as a handler.


	23. A HERO Is Born

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy founds a resistance and maybe takes over the world a bit with the help of Howard Stark.

Darcy watched the man who looked like Steve show Bucky a file on Howard Stark, but her mouth was talking to Red_Skyes on the encrypted voice chat. Jane was there too, making notes.

“So, I need to send a message to Howard Stark in 1991. What system will I be using and is there a record of his email?”

“Swapper, this is 1991, you’re talking about.” Red said in the modulated voice that was part of the encryption. “The web was not as you know it. Those were the NSFNET days, it was Howard Stark, so maybe he was on MILNET, possibly Nipper-net, but seriously? Practically uncharted waters here. Ugh, I’ll do some googling. I’ll need to know the system you use when you get to the computer.”

“Darcy, drink some Gatorade, you will probably be under a while,” Jane told her. Darcy sipped at the straw she was offered and followed Bucky as he was equipped. He asked for time to do surveillance, citing the target’s heavily defended status. The handler gave him a day. Out in the world, The Soldier fell back and Bucky started to come forward. Most of his infiltration methods were so successful in spite of his handlers. The handlers didn’t know he was still human, and humans do generally go unremarked by other humans. He slipped into a store selling personal computers. She felt him smile when the clerk asked if he’d like to try one, and said something about showing him the updated features.

“It’s a Mac Classic II,” she told Red.

“Ask if it has LAN.”

“Does this model have LAN hook-up? Or is it net-free?” she used Bucky’s voice to ask the clerk. He startled at the question and began to ramble about packages and pricing. Bucky lifted a fore finger, the metal one, to stop him so Darcy could clarify. “I mean this one right here. I want to test the modem data rates before I consider it.”

“Oh, yes, it is…” the man stammered.

“Good, off you go.” She steered Bucky to the keys and let Red talk her through hacking Nipper-net to find Howard’s email. According to Red it was depressingly easy and mildly miraculous ANY info on the military intranet had remained secure. According to Bucky this was like living in Science Fiction Land. Darcy didn't care as long as she got the access she needed to type up a fast email, no sender, and send it off to Howard.

**Subject: Code Darcy- HIGH PRIORITY Howard you ass, don’t you dare ignore me.**

**You are about to be assassinated by a ghost. Said ghost has a Code Darcy. Meet at 40°56'42.0"N 72°55'48.0"W tonight 2000 hrs.** ******Bring Maria, and for God’s sake, try not to be yourself towards your son. Last impressions are lasting impressions and he’s bad enough.**

She pulled back and let Bucky drive through the motions of following Howard as he went to work, and home, and then he went to set up at the meeting site. He disabled all but one of the road-safety cameras, which Darcy set to turn on later.

Howard pulled up and was out of the car almost instantly. “Barnes?”

“Net. No. Not… fully.”  _ Darcy, I need you to do this. Their new programming is really good. _

_ On it, say ‘Hi’ to my friends. _

Darcy straightened. Bucky had taken to hunching up a little to show submissive behavior. Phsst, like that man was ever gonna be submissive to Squid-Nazis.

“Code Darcy has been activated, Howard. It’s good to see you again.”

“But, you were dead!”

“Technically, so was Steve, and he’s currently being a mopey pain in my mental ass under the arctic.” She rolled her eyes.

“That’s not…”

“Possible? Neither is Bucky still being made of hot after like fifty years. Or me co-habitating his head. Or Squid-Nazis being back. And yet, his damn fine ass is here, with me driving, to warn you he was sent to kill you, by them. Our lives are fucking weird, Howard, you know that.” 

He didn’t look convinced, but they were on a time crunch, so she decided to just keep going and hope he decided to trust her after she shared the plan.

“You need to look very, very dead by tomorrow. We adapted a paint-gun so when we reactivate the camera to take a video back to the handler as proof, it’ll look real. Ish. We stage it to look like he kills you, then I take the tape, then we push the car into the ocean so it looks like you died in an accident, then you go into hiding. Do you know anyone under the radar who could take you in? I need you working on the resistance to this new crap.”

“How do I know this isn’t an elaborate ruse?” Howard demanded. “That they didn’t clone Barnes and tell him how to fake a Code Darcy.” 

Darcy sighed.

“Take my love, take my land, take me where I cannot stand, I don’t care I’m still free.” She stopped singing abruptly. “I am, he isn’t. They  _ took the sky _ from him, Howard. 

“No matter how much incidental crap got dropped into memos, I know they kept the true nature of Code Darcy a secret. You, Peggy, Phillips, the other Howlies, that’s all that knew **me** . HOW could I fake this? How could I fake the utter heartbreak he feels right now, the fact he asked me to take full control when he  **hates** doing that now, because the conditioning is too strong and he doesn’t WANT to kill you? How could I fake being **me** ? 

“So you have two options. You can trust me, follow the plan and go on the run. Or, I can shoot you, and Maria, shove you both off the cliff, push the car after you and go back with your blood, your DNA on my hands as proof, let them try to wipe me, and lie my ass off to one of the men I love so he won’t bear the guilt. I’m trusting you not to make me lie to him, Howard. I’m a killer and a shield and a sworn sister to the Norse god of thunder, but by God I am not a liar, not to them. Please don’t make me one. Please, Howard, trust me.”

“Trust her, Howie,” Maria said. “We can go to Hank. We’ll use my maiden name and get coach seats, nobody will know.”

“Maria…”

“Stop. A genius with machines you may be, but a smart man with women you aren’t. Thank you ma’am.”

“You just got Howard to stop arguing. That’s you, Peggy, and Morita I’ve seen do that. And Jim gets half marks for resorting to a language Howard didn’t know. I don’t know you, but damn, I am impressed. I’ll go turn the camera on, get back in the car and pretend it stalled.”

Once the camera was on, she emerged, paint-bulleted Howard and Maria, put them in the car and disabled the camera. Howard helped her push the car off the cliff, she erased the second set of footprints and took the film. Oh, god, VHS…ew. At least the grainy nature would give the scene more credence. She was swapping out the paint cartridge for a real one when Bucky edged back in.

_ How’d it go? _

_ Mission accomplished, we just don’t mention whose. _

_ You are devious, I love you. _

_ I love you too. _

<^>

Bucky fought the programming. Every time they strapped him into that damn chair, he and Darcy fought it, but to protect her so she could protect others, he had to take the conditioning. It wasn’t just shocks and suggestibility anymore. They added a rapid visual stimulus device over his right eye, which according to Darcy’s brain science friend Fleming, was designed to confuse and override his logic centers. 

All he knew was that he actively wanted, even if he didn’t want to want, to do the things his handler told him. Not Steve was still his handler and it was wrong and at the same time all he wanted was to be told by Not Steve that he did well, that he was good, that Not Steve was proud of him. When he successfully ended a mission, he did get all that and it felt good. He hated it. 

Only Darcy telling him how many of her missions he completed made it tolerable. They were small missions, things he could do in the down-times of Not Steve’s missions. Phone calls of warning, notes mailed off to names he didn’t know. He knew what she was doing, vaguely, in a way brought about by wipes and not being told many details to start with. A Resistance. The Squids were bad, and strong, and hidden. He knew that much. So Darcy was building something strong and hidden and  _ good _ , to counter it. 

He sent another letter as he passed a box on his way to plant a bomb he’d already called in the threat of. It wasn’t a successful Not Steve mission, and he was not told he was good. But Not Steve couldn’t hurt him for a random sweep catching the package before it blew. He would have to kill again soon. Too many thrown missions and they did it themselves while hurting him. 

They had learned that lesson long ago, when he claimed he had no shot from his perch when the open car with the pretty lady in pink and the smiling man came by him. The man had died, and Bucky had been hurt. Darcy called it torture, but it was easiest not to think in bigger words. He could think them with Darcy, but his words every other time were being stolen. Fleming thought he could get them back, with work. But he needed to be free first.

_ Hey Bucky. Do you want a jolt of memento? _

_ Yeah, something happy. I think this is a killing mission. _

**Sunlight poured over a bed spread, the metal frame of the bed glinting as he saw his face.**

_ A Steve memory… is he talking more? _

_ Yeah, he’s gotten over himself, thankfully.  _

“ **I’m so glad you’re mine,” his voice said. “Mine and I’m yours. Forever.” He heard Steve laugh, and it was good.**

**“Yeah, we belong to each other, til the end of the line.” He saw himself pull an envelope out of the pillowcase. He opened it and shook out a slim gold band.**

**“I know you can’t wear it all the time,” he said, “but Steve, would you take this? Be mine, let me be yours, death do us part and all that?” Steve laughed again.**

**“You threatening to make an honest man of me, James Barnes? I think we already did the sickness and health, richer and poorer, better or worse bits. And may death have some good fucking luck parting us. But I’ll take it. Get some string to have it on my neck or something, wear it in the house. Good thing my hands are small.”**

_ Thank you, I needed that. _

“Are you ready for your mission, Asset?”

“Yes.”

“A rogue operative by the name of Gabriel Jones is in this city. Kill him. Don’t worry about the body, we want it known he was killed.”

_ Darcy? _

_ I got this. You can stall once out; Gabe is known to be wily. Just say you’re stalking him. _

“I understand.”

He didn’t understand what Darcy did. She called others, gave orders, the new resistance moved quickly and when he needed to tap out, Darcy let him.

“Hi Doc.”

“Hello Bucky. Fruit gummy?” Jane Foster held a bag out to him without looking up from her screen. He took a lemon one and popped in in his mouth, enjoying the textures and flavor and the wet center.

“How’s Fleming?”

“Good, very good. We think we have a possible new Bifrost site, so that’s good. We’ll have to be in Missouri for it and Darcy is sure to want to go visit her grandmother.”

“Might be nice to meet her. By the time I was one of Darce’s Swaps she didn’t see her much. Old hips and airplanes, or something.”

“Oh, oh, Darcy didn’t tell you… I shouldn’t have said….”

“Doc?”

“Tell Darcy I didn’t mean to, and fess up early. Mrs. Bahrenburg passed on. Right after your Howard Stark mission. She got to say goodbye, and Darcy has all her books and got the house in the will, but….”

“But I won’t meet her.”

“No. I’m sorry. I thought she told you. It can be hard to tell without a monitor what’s grief and what’s a message swap.”

“Hey, she’s alive in 96, right? I could still meet her. Just not face to face.”

“It’s possible. Do you think this equation looks funky?”

“Doc, I’m a sniper, I do trig in my head. I know I'm a smart man. And that looks like super-science math to me. You are asking the wrong guy for help. Call that Hawking guy, Darcy says he’s quick on the uptake.”

“Like I’m ever going to get his number? I work out of an RV.”

“Worth a shot, though.” Then he slipped back under, a bullet graze on his thigh and blood on his metal hand as he limped away from a burning building.

_ Mission complete, as far as they know he triggered a self-destruct. Sorry about the thigh, we had to sell it. _

_ Is Jones…. _

_ Relocated. _

_ Thanks Dollface. _

_...What did you do? _

_ Tricked Jane into talking about your grandma. Accidentally. Sorry. _

_ It’s fine, I’m fine. It was peaceful. Ready? _

_ Yeah. _

The wipe burned, but then, he only partially remembered them anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Red: Red_Skyes (aka Skye from Agents of SHIELD)  
> Swapper: Darcy  
> NSFNET: the thing that served as the general internet in 1991.  
> MILNET: the thing that served as the secure military internet, replaced by Nipper-net in the early 90's but exactly when, how, and the coding used is all still classified.  
> Mac Classic II: a personal computer, which as a concept was very wow and new.  
> LAN: the hardwire precursor to internet access as we now know it.  
> Modem data rates: browser speed. (Also a complete lie, she just needs the internet.)  
> Intranet: like the internet, but a closed system.  
> Code Darcy: the Howlie code for Darcy showing up.  
> 2000 hrs: 8pm  
> Memento: Latin for the command "Remember!" also used for things kept to remind you of things that you saw or did.  
> Make an honest man: get married. Also worked as make an honest woman, depending on the person talked about.  
> Quick on the uptake: smart.  
> Dollface: an endearment Bucky usually uses when he's in trouble.
> 
> Notes:  
> Skye (Red) is apprehensive about the hacking even though it turns out easy, because the skills are not always translatable. Someone who can hack a computer that used one programming language might be totally lost trying to hack into something using another. Without knowing the details of what was used when Darcy is hacking, Red could not get her in. And by googling, she means hacking into secure files on systems she knows she can crack. Thus is it easier.
> 
> Cryo-freeze really is considered medically impossible with today's tech.
> 
> The song Darcy sings is the opening track to the show Firefly, a beloved story of hers that she told the Howlies, Howard probably heard her sing it before. The end of the line is "I don't care, I'm still free, you can't take the sky from me."
> 
> I messed with the staging here because I needed to fake their deaths, not fake the accidental nature of the deaths. So conflict from the recording in Civil War should be ignored. I also changed the mission profile to kill, not kill and take serum for story reasons.
> 
> VHS videotapes went out of common usage when Darcy was a kid in favor of DVD, which has not been invented yet. VHS security tapes are notoriously bad quality because of constant taping over.
> 
> The placement of the thing on his eye in the chair only makes sense if they are giving him subliminal orders and "flash" that is, random or distressing images to disrupt left hemisphere processes. While we still know little about brains and new evidence has shown much of what we thought we knew to be false, in the 90's through 2011 we still thought left brain handled logic. Even without logic over-rides, subliminal messages can potently effect the mind, hence the "I want to, even though I know I don't really want to" thing.
> 
> Grief can result in flat affect (a blank look on the face) but so does the partial swap that happens when Darcy is talking to her boys.
> 
> Steven Hawking is a famous astrophysicist and genius. That Bucky thinks he's smart but is not in awe of him says a lot about how much he respects Jane's brilliance and on what level he thinks she operates at. Of course Bucky is also very smart (see trig calculations in his head) but Jane is four or five steps up the ladder and he knows it.


	24. Death and Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy continues to organize her army, saves Dugan and gets good news.
> 
> Steve freaks out, gets a hangover, and would really like it if Jane were the kind of doctor that fixed headaches.
> 
> Bucky gets a mental giggle over being underestimated, shares Darcy's good news, and asks for a favorite reading.

Darcy was a busy little bee when not helping Jane, which was also busy in and of itself. She collected data on what had happened, found ways to mitigate the worst of it, and got the right people invested in helping. She got as many of their targets to safety as she could, a number of retired S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel running safe houses across the globe, and many of those former targets turned around and worked to curb Hydra’s influence where they found it. Corporations fell to RICO task forces, individuals went missing or died in their sleep, and the tentacles ensnaring the world were weakened or snapped entirely. 

Darcy was the one who sent letters to Monty and Dernier warning them, and as a result, they faked their own deaths. Peggy was the one who got Morita out, another veteran who lost it and disappeared from the streets. Only this time, he reappeared on the new web, early though it was, organizing, sorting, encrypting, the invisible and untraceable head of the snake that could not be cut off. He went by Fresno!Ace, and all his communication to her was signed YCSTS. He’d liked that part of the story, that line, that idea… you can’t stop the signal. Of course he’d run comms during the War, so of course he liked that.

Darcy watched as the times changed to things she remembered, jelly shoes and Nickelodeon on the TVs she passed in malls. She knew what was coming and she prepared herself.

When she wasn’t under, swapped with Bucky she mothered Jane, but having to care for Darcy had made her much more independent. No more the tiny human disaster, she asked Darcy for taser lessons, and soon was pretty good with the lead-taser Darcy used in New Mexico. When Jane presented her with an upgrade for her birthday, Darcy passed Sparky to Jane. She suspected Bucky of also training Jane, because when a mugger in Heavengate, Maine tried to take her purse, Jane punched the guy in the jaw and knocked him out. She supposed they both had a weakness for tiny, adorable, rage-fueled human wrecking balls determined to upset the status quo.

Finally, the day came that she settled in beside Bucky as the creep who used to look like Steve showed them a file on one Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader Dugan. She was getting supervision, since the target was considered extremely dangerous.

_ Damn straight, Dum-Dum is dangerous, he’s crazy!  _ Darcy said to Bucky in his head.  _ Almost feel bad leading those guys to their dooms. _

_ I note the use of the word Almost, there, Doll. _

_ Well, they are Squid-Nazis. It is very hard to pity or feel guilty about Squid-Nazis getting the brunt of Dugan’s crazy to the face. _

_ Agreed. We’ll have to play this straight while they live. And once we see him, you need to drive. The damn conditioning…. _

_ I know. It’s ok, you just take a break. _

_ I mean it, though, they can’t know you’re with me. _

_ Understood. Gear up and do your thing, I’m going to do my nails, ping me on the line when you need me. Oh, and what does Kukly mean? _

_ Doll. It isn’t a pet name like I use it, not in Russian. Why? _

_ Something I heard. It’s good. _

She slipped mostly out of the swap, only the thinnest thread holding her to the timeline. She finished her new manicure, a vibranium-adamantium silver color with red French tips and a thin line of royal blue dividing them. It was nice looking. Very fierce, very her boys. They had just set up when Bucky tugged the line.

She dove in with easy grace and dropped the rifle’s stock from Dugan’s neck.

“Hey Dum-Dum, you got cameras working in here? I’ll need to kill them so there’s no proof.”

“That you’re trying to kill me? Why would I tell you anything, you monster wearing my friend’s face?”

“That is  _ hurtful _ , Dugan,” she said with a mock frown and an exaggerated hand over her heart. “We’re having a code… oh crapballs, hold please.” 

She grabbed the body of the man Dugan had used his double barreled shotgun on, slammed it into the ground, grabbed the phone and said “Kukly, leave it,” before hanging up. 

“Sorry, timeline maintenance issue,” she explained. “Code Darcy is active, I’m here to help you fake your death at my -- his -- hands so his creepy evil handlers won’t do the cold shower cryo thing to him again and also to get you to the resistance. Morita has been pissed you went so far off grid.”

“Morita’s dead, and I’m off grid because even a Dum-Dum can spot the pattern of Howlies dropping like flies.”

“One sec,” she grabbed his phone and dialed a number. “Yo, Fres, got some pushback on the big guy. Yeah, they found him, ain’t it just shiny when the Purplebellies do the work for us? Ok, putting you on.” She handed Dugan the phone. A few minutes of swearing later, he hung up.

“So… what now?”

“Morita dispatched a crew to get you to safety. Why do you have to live in the fucking woods? I hate the woods. Did we not spend enough time without central HVAC already? Anyhoo, after that, I’ll drag the bodies inside, torch it and go report back that you are very, very dead. End of story as far as you need to be concerned. You might get shuffled some to find the best safe-house, but you can quit now. Or help out like Morita does, or host a safe-house of your own like Monty and Jacques do, or take a more active role, like Jones used to.”

“Used to?”

“Bomb, failsafe, small but directed kaboom, uses a wheelchair and is saltier than the Dead Sea about the whole thing." She cocked her head in though. "He _is_ like eighty now.”

“So am I. So should you be.”

“I would trade Buck's cryo-tube for a wheelchair in a heartbeat, but he doesn’t get a say. Bomb in the arm, an EMP. If I run, if he runs, he takes out a city’s power. Even if we reach max distance, the EMP destroys the arm, and there’s a dead man’s switch fail safe that dumps rabies into the blood. I think. I don’t know how to read Russian, and they put the biologics in. He does read Russian, but that’s not a normal vocabulary word.”

“Ok, when do they get here?”

“Mister Dugan, Sir, we already are here,” said a man behind her.

“Go, stay safe,” she told him, not turning.

“You too Lieu, and the Sarge, safe as you can.” She nodded and he passed her. She waited, dragged the bodies inside and tossed a grenade into his stash of orange fuel tanks.

_ Is it safe?  _

_ Yeah, he’s gone, in a very extreme way,  _ Darcy said. _ See fire and boom for more reference. _

_ Is he… _

_ No, of course not. I just don’t want to make your conditioning harder on you. _

_ Thanks. Love you. _

_ Love you too. Call when you need me, I think you pulled a muscle. Why is my back so sore? _

_ There was tequila, and a dare, and I cannot do a handstand in your body. _

_ I hate you. _

_ I love you too, Dollface. _

<^>

Steve felt warm. It was weird. But he felt it and it scared him. So he did what he always did when scared.

_ Darcy? _

_ Ugh, I hate Barnes, I hate tequila, and I hate the sun. Turn it off. _

_ Darcy… Are you hungover? _

_ Yes, stupid Bucky drinking tequila and doing handstands and stupid Jane letting him. _

_ I’ll trade you, I’m warm. Darcy, I flew into the Arctic, why am I warm? _

_ Bout damn time, I put Secret Agent Man on that a year ago. You’re being rescued. Let me check something. _

Steve waited. He was still warm. And… sloshy. So weird.

_ Ok, Fleming says you are probably in a room temp brine bath to de-ice you safely. Still want my hangover? _

_ Least I could do. _

Steve regretted that.

“Oh god what did she drink?”

“Tequila, James, you were there, you drank it,” said a petite woman in a plaid shirt and jeans.

“Not James,” he grunted. Now he was sort of glad his body couldn’t get drunk.

“OH! You must be Steve, nice to meet you, I’m Doctor Jane Foster, Darcy’s boss. Do you mind if I put the Scan Hat on you? Fleming will be so pissed if I don’t get a scan of Darcy’s other Swap while fully active.”

“Uh…”

“We’re studying it, it’s relevant to my wormhole research. The hat is just a hat with some little electrode sensors. Noninvasive, not painful. Promise.”

“You’re a doctor?”

“Yes.” She sounded affronted by his question.

“Fix the headache, please.”

“Not THAT kind of doctor,” she admonished, rolling her eyes. “I have a doctorate in astrophysics. The stars, how they work, why they work, figuring out the things we don’t know, which is most of it. I specialize in Einstein-Rosen Bridges, wormholes that allow you to pass large distances in a step.”

“Oh, and hence Darcy. But headache… tequila bad.”

“She already took the painkillers, they’ll kick in soon. Here, have some Gatorade, it helps replenish the bodies-”

“Not the blue kind. I don’t like the blue kind. Do you have any of the white kind?”

“Lemon or cherry?”

“Cherry.” He took the bottle she passed him, and drank it. “You can do the thing with the hat if Darcy has already said you could. Her body, her rules. Ugh, why would Bucky drink something that does this?”

“In his defense, I don’t think he knew about the after effect of tequila when he stole my margarita,” she said as she settled a hat on him. “Or that I make them with half booze and half margarita mix. It is not my fault Darcy can’t hold that kind of liquor.”

“She once drank a Mickey Finn on purpose. She was me at the time, but I was you-sized and could barely hold a seltzer water. I’m told she sang about a guy named Mickey being a creep.”

“Ah yes, she mentioned that. Alternate lyrics to Hey Mickey. I’d play the original for you but I think playing Tony Basil when you have a hangover is cruel and unusual punishment.”

Steve grunted, finished the Gatorade, and fell asleep on Darcy’s crossed arms.

<^>

“Sir, we have a… should we go outside?”

“We’re in the most secure room in DC. Why would we move?”

“Uh, him, Sir.” The subordinate gestured at the cryotube. The man in the tube was passive, lax, hovering between true sleep and diligent waiting.

“The Asset has had his brain fried so bad half the time he only speaks Russian,” the Not Steve said. “You can speak.”

The Asset, the Soldier, but the man in the tube neither of them. He was more than the flat names they gave him, and he reached for the part that was more on hearing them talk like he couldn’t. Darcy slid in beside him to take the information they didn’t know they were offering her.

_ Where are we? _

_ DC, Secure room, except for y’know, us. They think I’m braindead. _

_ You couldn’t do the shit you do if you were. _

_ I know, it’s funny. _

“Sir, they found Captain Rogers. They’re defrosting him now.”

“For burial? This matters how?” Not Steve kept shuffling his papers, ignoring his subordinate.

“No, Sir, he’s  _ alive. _ He survived that crash, the ice, seventy years, he looks as young as my kid, Sir. What are our orders?” The subordinate bounced on his toes like a giddy child. “Should we try to turn him? We can use his culture shock…”

“No, we’re too close to Insight becoming a reality to risk it on an unknown. Let me handle it. I’ll push Nick’s buttons, get Rogers in a vulnerable spot, then we can let the Asset have him. With that bad publicity, S.H.I.E.L.D. will fall and we will step into the light. They’ll never see it coming.”

“Yes Sir, Mr. Pierce, Sir.”

_ Well, he was right on one count. _

_ What’s that Doll? _

_ They will never, ever see us coming. _

_ What was that line, from the comedy group you like? _

_ No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition. _

_ I’m not Spanish and I don’t feel like asking questions. _

_ No one ever expects the Winter Soldier either. _

_ Read it to me again, Doll? The Crisis? _

_ These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman…. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> RICO: a RICO task force looks into criminal enterprise masquerading as a legit business.  
> Comms: the communications with the intel and orders people from the front lines.  
> Jelly shoes: a vastly inexplicable (because they were awful) fad of 1990's America.  
> Nickelodeon: a children's TV network also vastly popular in the 90's but with better reasons.  
> Lead-taser: a taser that shoots long leads to conduct the electric charge, as seen in Thor.  
> Pronged taser: a taser that channels charge direct from the body through short prongs. Not a distance weapon, but more re-usable.  
> Off grid: out of touch, hidden from normal channels that might get you found.  
> Shiny: Firefly slang for cool or neat.  
> Purplebellies: Firefly slang for the Alliance's officers, the Alliance was the big evil force in that show. Code for Hydra.  
> HVAC: Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning, a form of temperature and atmosphere control for homes.  
> EMP: electro-magnetic pulse, a strong one can put an entire metro area out of power, even generators and cars.  
> Dead-man's switch: something that turns on a bad thing should the one controlling it stops controlling it, usually if dead.  
> Brine: salt water, like the stuff they put on iced up roads basically. I can't think of a better method of saving him from dying in defrost.
> 
> Notes:  
> You can't stop the Signal was a catchphrase of Mister Universe in the movie Serenity. It became a very plot relevant thing and is now up there with "I'm a leaf on the wind" and "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal" as stuff Browncoats get and others don't.
> 
> Kukly does in fact just mean doll as in a child's toy. A better pet-name would be konfetka, sweetie, or vozlyublennaya, beloved.
> 
> The stock is the heavy wood or composite bit that supports the barrel, the best part to pin a big guy like Dugan to a wall with.
> 
> Orange tanks are often a hallmark of propane, but can hold other combustion fuels. Either way, a grenade in the stock pile would make a very big boom and a crater full of fire.
> 
> Gatorade is a sports drink that does assist in lessening a hang-over. It comes in 31 flavors, and at least two are white colored, one is glacier cherry, the other is lemon ice, but to my knowledge, nobody ever uses those names. Flavor is identified by color first and fruit type within a color when there's more than one.
> 
> No one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition is a line from a Monty Python skit.
> 
> The American Crisis (often shortened to The Crisis) is a collection of articles written by Thomas Paine during the American Revolutionary War. The first is most often quoted, and General Washington found that one so inspiring, he ordered that it be read to the troops at Valley Forge. Remember, that was the place where 12,000 American soldiers took refuge in a winter so harsh 2,500 of them died from natural causes, as in nature killed them, not the enemy. While Paine does not ever use the words Winter Soldier, his implication is that if you are only willing to fight in nice weather, a "summer soldier", you aren't that great and the guy who is there in the depth of winter when everything seems lost, that guy, the winter soldier, is the true hero. This is why it is so comforting to Bucky. He is a Winter Soldier, and not because of what the Red Room named him, because he serves under the worst of conditions during the times that try men's souls. Read the full article here: http://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/c-01.htm


	25. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy helps Steve through the waking up process, and comes to his rescue.
> 
> Steve is not five minutes awake before he gets tired of the old bull being re-used, and is not having it.
> 
> Bucky is happy to get to see them, even by proxy.

Darcy went back to Steve after Bucky was wiped and stored. She felt his body being moved, manipulated, undressed, dressed, all without him moving himself, being there, consenting. She knew they thought he was unconscious, and his body was. She couldn’t get a single thing to move on her own, not even a twitch. And she knew, that, that was a blood pressure cuff, and that was a thermometer, and that was clean clothing, and that was a comb going through his hair, these were all to make sure he was ok, but still. He couldn’t consent to any of this. It pissed her off and her rage was a living beast inside her mind that she tried to shut away. 

Maybe it was so long beside Bucky when things he didn’t want were done to him and she couldn’t stop it, and maybe it was hoping that the good guys, that Secret Agent Man, would be better than that. Maybe it was learning that S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t as clean and good as it wanted people to think. Maybe it was fear it wasn’t good guys, who held and moved and dressed and cleaned and neatened him. None of those maybes changed the fact that she felt so angry she could scream.

But anger was not what Steve needed. He needed support. He needed help. He needed her.

So when Steve slipped in beside her, she didn’t rail or bitch over the unfairness. She told him what she had overheard, little snippets of conversation.

_ It’s 2012, we’re in the same year now. _

_ That’s great. Where are you? I’ll come out and we can have a real date, see a movie actually together. _

_ You’re in New York City, a secure facility. _

_ Darcy? Do… do you not want to go on a date? _

_ I’d love to, but you have maybe seven layers of security on you right now. You’re a War Hero who came back from the dead, Steve. I’ve been in contact with the head suit from New Mexico, on and off, we have to be discrete, I don’t want to be dissected so they can figure me out. But I gave him your vectors, and they found you. _

_ Do you trust them? _

_ I trust Agent Phil Coulson, and I trust Eric, who is working with the Cube. They found it before they found you. He’s been stalling the research for me, I know what it can do, so do you. Phil trusts a guy named Clint who does some of the drops when we communicate. Nice guy, sniper, only he doesn’t like guns. _

_ What kind of a sniper doesn’t like… oh God it’s another Mad Jack. _

_ Every batch apparently has one nut in it. Clint’s this season’s loon. He also trusts a lady who’s name I do not know, because she changes it as often as her hairstyle, but her hair is always red, and her initials are always N. R. You’ll know her because she has the same “I wear red because I am not afraid to cut a bitch” thing Peggy had. _

_ So, our circle of trust is a guy who attacked you, a guy working on a Cube project, a maniac with a bow and arrow problem, and a terrifying red head who thinks a name is a thing other people have? _

_ Yep. _

_ We’re screwed. _

_ Yes we are. I’m a few hours out, I’ll head to the city, try to get to Times Square. It might be the only place you won’t stick out. I don’t know the day, so you may have to wait, or I might. _

_ I’ll see you soon. I love you Darcy Lewis. _

_ I know. _

_ Huh? _

_ ARGH! I knew I forgot something, we never watched Star Wars! Gotta go, love you too, Steve Rogers. _

Darcy slipped into her own body. “Jane, we need to go to New York City.”

“We do?” the scientist asked from her screen, not looking up.

“Yes, and you’re driving.”

“You banned me from driving after the speeding ticket outside Omaha, Darcy.”

“Because you broke interstate highway speed limits on a back-road state highway, Jane. And now, if it is at all possible to get this thing to break the sound barrier, I need it to, and you are the one to ask.”

“You found him, one of them.”

“Steve. He’s in New York, I told him I’d meet him at Times Square. So, lay on the gas, Janey, pedal to metal, floor it,” she listed terms for speeding as she buckled in and Jane moved to the driver’s seat.

“Autobahn?” Jane asked, hopeful.

“No. The Autobahn actually has an advisory speed limit. Break that.” Darcy told her friend. “Try not to hit anyone,” she added, as an afterthought.

<^>

Steve woke up to the sound of a baseball game on a radio. An old one, from 41, MAY of 41, America hadn’t entered the war then, how dumb did they think he was? He opened his eyes and looked at the replica room, spotting all the little errors. He looked at his chest, a print tee, really? They didn’t have those, tee shirts were  _ undershirts _ , you didn’t  _ decorate _ them. A woman walked in, and nope, not a single one of his chorus line would be caught dead in that outfit, and her hair was off, and he hated to even think it, but she was clearly wearing a modern seamless bra under that shirt, the profile was too natural. They  _ did _ know he had been an artist, yeah? He noticed this stuff.

“Where am I?” he asked sternly.

“You’re in a recovery room in New York City.” No, she had red hair but she wasn’t anywhere near Peggy in terms of sheer terror created in him. She wasn’t even that close to Darcy. Therefore, not N.R. whoever that may be.

“Where am I,” he asked again, slowly, “really?”

“I.. I don’t know what you mean.” Steve sighed, he did not have time for this, he had a date.

“Listen, Ma’am, I know you are just doing a job. I am a box on a checklist to you. Pick up your coffee, file that report on the latest action, check in on the dancing monkey, re-order ammo for the side arm you left in your desk. Yes, I see you twitching towards it, Peggy did the same, and as she once emptied a clip at me I know to look. 

“I also know I am not in the nineteen forties. Printed tee?” He picked at his shirt before pointing to the radio. “A ball game from before we were at war? That is not a real plant, and you have the windows open but I don’t smell garbage or automobile exhaust or coal dust.” He stood up. “What I smell, is, if you will pardon a soldier’s language, a line of bullshit. What you are selling here ma’am, I ain’t buying. Where am I. Easy question, three words, just answer me.”

“I….” He heard a click and threw himself back at the wall. It sounded a lot like an anti-personnel mine arming, and how was he supposed to know he’d go  _ through the wall? _ Well, no time like the present. He ran for it. Over the speakers he heard her alerting the building to a code 13. He saw glass doors heading out and ran. 

He made it to Times Square when black vans circled him and an intimidating negro- no wait.  _ Steve, you dummy, you’re in 2012, the correct form is African American, _ a voice in his head that sounded like Buck told him, so he revised his thoughts. An intimidating  _ African American _ man in a trench coat and an eye-patch hopped out. He stood like he owned every bit of land he could see and commanded all the men on it.

“At ease, soldier! Look, I'm sorry about that little show back there, but we thought it best to break it to you slowly.”

“Break what and who are you?”

“You’ve been asleep Cap. For almost seventy years.”

“I wasn’t sleeping the whole time, and you didn’t answer me. Who are you and what is the agency you work for?”

The man blinked. This was not an expected response. So not Clint. Although the eye-patch was already a bit of a giveaway, snipers needed depth perception.

“I’m Director Nick Fury, of S.H.I.E.L.D. We are what the SSR became, under Peggy Carter and Howard Stark.”

“Well, Director Fury, I’d say my tour is over, as of a little under seventy years ago. And I have a date with a beautiful woman. So the SSR, and Shield, which is a very corny name, can say goodbye now, because I?  _ I have a date _ .”

“I think you mean ‘had’ a date, son,” the man said comfortingly. Steve wondered if he was that annoying when he said 'son'.

“I’m old enough to be your grandpa, Director, and I meant what I said.” A screech of wheels sounded off to the side and he turned to see a big off-white vehicle pull to a stop just shy of the ring of vans.

Darcy hopped out, calling back inside, “good job Jane, you didn’t hit anyone this time!” She ran over, casually flipping men twice her size out of her way as she ran to Steve.

“Angel! Oh, Darcy, it is good to see you.” He wrapped her in his arms and they held each other like they were drowning and only the anchor of the other kept them afloat.

After a long moment, Darcy patted his arm twice and spoke into his chest. “Ok, I fully appreciate the face full of man-boobs, but I need air, Steve.”

“Oh, sorry, Darce.” He pulled back, but kept an arm around her, daring anyone to try to part them. “Super strength,” he said apologetically.

“Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex, I know. We’ll find a work around,” she said, casually mentioning the horrific little strip from a modern Tijuana Bible that had made him gag when he first saw it.

“Ugh.” He shuddered at the thought of hurting Darcy when they made love together, well… if she wanted to, with the new risks he wouldn’t blame her if she declined. “Don’t even joke, Darce, I could not handle doing that to you, especially during  _ that _ . So, you said something about Star Wars?”

“Excuse me,” Director Fury said affronted. “But who are you and why are you in my cordon?”

“I’m his girlfriend, and I’m picking him up for a really,  _ severely _ , over due date. Oh, and our dance partner is in DC right now,” she told Steve, dismissing the Director.

“He ok?”

“As much as he can be. It was not pretty, Steve. Oh, he said to give you this,” she motioned him down and he leaned in obligingly. “The ARCTIC, you moron?” she said as she slapped his head. “Those were his words.”

“I might have deserved that.”

“ALRIGHT!” Fury yelled, living up to his name. “What in the ever-loving fuck is going on here?”

“Sorry, sir, I was packing up some delicate things when the alert sounded. Plan not go according to?” said a placid man Steve recognized.

“Say your ‘I told you so’s’ after you can tell me what a civilian is doing in my cordon.”

“Lewis isn’t a civilian, Sir, she was adopted by Thor in the Puente Antiguo incident as his sister, and is therefore a foreign emissary. If you’ll recall the mission report from that incident, she served with the courage and dignity befitting an officer.”

“They don’t call me the Lieu for nothin’, Director. Nice to see you again, Sam my man. Still the spook of all spooks?”

“I hate that nickname,” Coulson muttered lowly.

“Pick a better e-Bay username, then, Secret Agent Man.”

“Wait, the Lieu?” Fury asked. “As in….”

“Whatever Carter told you was a lie, I was not responsible for that, everyone knows you never store your flour next to your gunpowder. And the bleach and ammonia thing was  _ one time.” _

“AT EASE!” he commanded the men. “Cheese, get them out of here.” Coulson moved to evacuate the agents from the Square.

“A pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” Fury said more politely. “I wasn’t expecting….”

“No one ever does, Fury. Now, I’m taking my man, going to a hotel, and making sure he’s all right. This good with you?” she asked in a way that implied his answer was irrelevant. He handed her a shiny black card.

“On us. Whatever he needs. You can contact me through Coulson, I know you two have some kind of a line of communication. Just… we don’t usually get them  _ back _ , you understand?”

“To all the ones who weren’t as lucky. I was there, I  _ know _ , Sir. The worst that will happen under my care is him bankrupting a Golden Corral. Man likes his all you can eat’s.”

<^>

The man in the tube pretended he slept, the cool air of his pod condensing on his flesh, he saw through Darcy’s eyes, Steve, their Steve. He could make it, for Steve, for Darcy. He could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Suit- can be used to mean an official, in Army slang, an officer who never goes into combat might be called this, but Darcy isn't using it like that, which is visible in the lack of other disrespects.  
> Emptied a clip- to fire a handgun rapidly, even if the whole clip is not in fact emptied or the gun does not use a magazine-loading system.  
> Cordon- a limited access zone set up by law enforcement.
> 
> Notes:  
> Bodily consent is a big hot button for Darcy, both as a Millennial female in America and as the woman helping Bucky in his struggle with extreme violation of bodily consent. None of what happens is strictly speaking in violation, because a person who is in danger and unconscious is assumed to have implied consent for helping actions until they wake up and actively deny the treatment or aid.
> 
> Yes, Steve you big hypocrite, Clint is the new Mad Jack Churchill, please see prior notes for more on that guy.
> 
> Times Square, where Steve ends up in the movies, is widely considered weird, even by native New Yorkers, and yes, might be the best place for a time-displaced formerly dead WWII war hero to blend in.
> 
> "I love you." "I know." is a classic Star Wars quote.
> 
> The Autobahn is a national highway in Germany famous for not having an enforced speed limit. It does, as Darcy states, have a reasonable speed advisory limit, and going faster than that can put you at legal risk in case of an accident.
> 
> There were so many prop errors in that scene I can only conclude that it was intentional, as during the War section of the movie, props and costuming were very on the ball. And yes, that actress is not wearing the right kind of bra even though Peggy was the entire movie.
> 
> Coal was a common energy source in 1940's New York, and has a distinct smell.
> 
> Loss of sight in one eye destroys all long range accuracy. Snipers fear eye damage more than having a trigger finger cut off, because you can learn to shoot off hand, but the eye? Not a good way to regain old skill levels for the eye.
> 
> Steve hears the acronym as a word and will continue to think and speak it like a name until he sees the acronym form.
> 
> Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex is a one-off comic strip that gained some fame about Superman accidentally murdering Lois during sex.
> 
> Tijuana Bibles were the deviantart hentai comic porn of Steve's day, containing some amazingly kinky shit like domme Betty Boop and Minnie Mouse getting spitroasted. They were graphic and anyone who claims perversion is a new thing needs to be sat down with one.
> 
> "I might have deserved that." is a line from Pirates of the Caribbean, which Steve has seen with Darcy.
> 
> Flour stored by gunpowder increases chances of a stray spark causing a massive explosion as burning flour dust spreads up and out. See the Mythbusters coffee creamer cannon episode for more on particulate explosions. Bleach and ammonia are common cleaning chemicals that when mixed, form a volatile toxic gas similar to mustard gas.
> 
> “To all the ones who weren’t as lucky." is a common toast among veterans to honor the dead. It is NEVER used flippantly in the military and I know at least one veteran who is more than happy to deck anyone who uses it improperly, and I have seen her do so. Darcy is NOT using it as a joke, she is using it to say "I understand you, I know what this means to you, I was there and I get it" even if she does follow it with a joke about Steve's appetite.


	26. Dreams and Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy takes Steve and Jane to eat and rest, talks around things and discusses music.
> 
> Steve has a night-terror, but as always, when he needs her, Darcy is there.
> 
> Bucky dreams of Darcy and Steve and a sky you can't take.

Darcy pampered Steve a little, ok, a lot, the nicest hotel, the nicest suite, because he insisted that she have her own bed, and the Presidential suite with one king bed and two full size was the only one that could do that and not make her Janey find somewhere else. Darcy had no aversion to zonking out in a bed next to a friend, but Jane turned into a heat-seeking octopus when asleep and Darcy was worried she’d have to snap Steve out of a night terror. She had them too after the War, and she hadn’t served as long and didn’t have his serum enhanced super-memory. Jane totally got that, having been the one to wake Darcy up at two in the morning when she was sneaking back into the lab and Darcy was thrashing and whimpering. Darcy’s nightmares were better now, calmer, but she and Jane shared a look when Steve insisted he would be fine.

She got the three of them room service, enough for six, because Steve had an enhanced metabolism and as teeny as Jane was, girl could murder a big steak. They had learned this in a Texas bar challenge, where Jane displaced the reigning champ without noticing, until someone took her picture, that she’d ordered the challenge meal. Darcy had a good appetite, but her black and blu veggie burger, fries, salad, and shake, really did not take the lion’s share. Steve had a hard time not turning to talk food and wine with the Howlies, and after the third time catching himself, he swallowed hard and apologized to them.

“I’m sorry I keep doing that, I should pay more attention to you two, not people who aren’t here, and would be ancient anyways.”

“Steve, it’s perfectly rational, to you, you saw them young and healthy yesterday,” Jane reassured him. “The first time I got James on a swap, he kept asking where Melina was, I don’t even know anybody named Melina. But she was someone he knew, and I wasn’t. You’ll slip, that’s normal. We’ll catch you, that’s human.”

“Yeah. Guess they’re all dead, now. If the war didn’t then… Christ, I’m maudlin and I can’t even get drunk. I’m a maudlin sober.”

“Wow, Jane, our boyfriends have something in common!” Darcy snarked with a smile. “And all the boys are fine, if cranky and old. And cranky about being old. Jones lost his legs at the knee, Dernier’s hearing went out early, like we all knew it would, crazy explosion happy frog, Monty had to get a hip replaced two years ago, but they can do that now, and he’s fine, just very glad he moved to a house with fewer stairs.”

“But, you showed me a memory of Dugan…” Steve trailed off. He didn’t want to think about that.

“That was misinformed. A few months ago I did a Swap with Bucky when he was assigned to kill Dugan. He used the crazy, paranoid fucker’s defense system to wipe his surveillance squad out, brought me in so his conditioning wouldn’t make  _ him _ do it, and I got Dugan to the resistance while maintaining the timeline. It always bugged me he said “kukly”, and not a Russian pet name, now I know it was me, talking to me, and I try really hard not to think about that,” she sipped her Moscato. “Wine helps.”

“You listen to Jacques too much.”

“I can’t help that; he yells when I talk to him, because of the deaf thing. The stubborn ass won’t just do letters or sign language, _no_ his hearing is _fine._ But yeah, the wine was his idea, and not a bad one.” She popped a fry in her mouth and swallowed before continuing. “I can’t do much but listen from this time-zone though. I know some of the resistance groups, but I need to keep them from knowing me. We have some support staff who know me anonymously online, but I try to stay away from ops, my cover is important.”

“So what are you resisting?”

“Calamari is back on the menu, new and not so much improved,” she said out loud. Over the link she dropped a collage of memory. A familiar symbol on an unfamiliar wall, missions and code words and a resistance. A repeat of a memory she shared from the other side of the phone.

Steve gasped for air as the implications hit him. He opened his mouth to ask questions, but Darcy laid a hand on his.

“Later, sweetheart, no shop talk at dinner.”

“It’s a rule,” Jane added. “No mixing Science! and a nice, sit-down meal that involves more than one piece of silverware. If I can’t theorize about Einstein-Rosen bridges over steak, you two can’t talk world saving.”

“That seems fair, Ma’am.”

“Seriously, use my name. Last warning.”

“Sorry Dr. Foster.” Jane wrinkled her nose, but went back to eating her steak.

“So, Steve,” Darcy said to break the tenseness. “I made you a new playlist. It’s on your own iPod and as soon as we get you real ID for this century and a bank account I’ll show you how to buy more songs.”

“Aw, thanks, Angel, does it have any of that one singer, Swift, her name was, I liked Picture to Burn. It was a real good Torch song, I like that she didn’t sing about wanting him back.”

“No, we do not mention the TSwift days,” Jane said sharply, pointing a steak knife at him. “I had to put a ban on her playing The Story of Us in the lab.”

“Geeze, a girl leaves a song on repeat one time… but Jane is right, when I was in a not good place, Story of Us was kinda my theme song. I kept most of the sadder stuff off yours. It’s got Marina and the Diamonds though, and you liked her, right? Also Black Veil Brides, Katy Perry, and Kenny Chesney, you have some diverse tastes, my dude. I love you for it, but you’re weird.”

“Can you blame me? Home was Big Band Swing I could _not_ dance to, and crooners, nothin’ but crooners. You gave me this huge pallet of thousands of colors, not just the visual ones.”

“And now you are a musical Jackson Pollack and it is damn hard to make you a mix. Thank god Bucky’s practically builds itself. Eighties power ballads, sixties freedom fighter songs, Postmodern Jukebox, and then the strange thing he has for girl power rock, I really think he’s going to like Cherri Bomb.”

“Mmhmm. Angel, you said he was… that it was bad?”

“He’s been served off season Calamari every meal for a few too many meals, of course it’s bad.”

“Is there a reason you’re not… saying it?” he asked her and she sighed.

“Reasonable paranoia. Long tentacles. I forgot the bug zapper in the van? Take your pick. We’ll get him back; I just want to get your feet under you first.”

“He should try to get some sleep soon,” Jane said around a mouthful of baked potato. “It’s 9pm, and getting back on a regular schedule of sleep is helpful.”

“I slept for near on seventy years, Doctor Foster, I don’t feel like sleeping much.” Jane opened her mouth and Darcy silenced her with a look.

“Pot, I see you met kettle? She is right Steve, even if she is a giant insomniac hypocrite. And we busted ass getting here, I need sleep too.”

“Alright, I’ll try. Night, Angel.” He kissed her head and went to his own bed. Darcy fussed at Jane until she tucked in and was out almost instantly. Then Darcy got in her own bed and fell asleep.

<^>

Steve did try to sleep, but it was hard. He had too many thoughts. Hydra was still alive and well, and holding Bucky captive and using him. Darcy was now the leader of a resistance group that had to operate so deeply in the shadows that she didn’t contact her operatives and was scared to even say the word for what they fought. He saw the fight, the years of war and horror on her face. She hid it well, but she had been fighting a very real war, as real as the one they shared, while he was sleeping. He knew he was being unfair to himself, he’d been frozen, he’d tried to give her help. But his thoughts kept circling around that. Bucky and Darcy had been fighting, while he slept.

When he finally drifted off sometime past midnight, he dreamed of the Howlies, and Peggy and even Howard and Phillips in a big dance hall to welcome him home, only when he reached for them, to hug them or slap their backs, they turned into dust and the cheers turned into wails. Everyone was gone. 

At the far end of the dance hall, Darcy stood there in a pretty burgundy dress he remembered from her senior prom, all layers and trails of sheer ruffled fabric like a fairy princess, her hair up and trails of stray ringlets framed her face and she looked like a dream, only it quickly turned into a nightmare. As he walked towards her, the fairy princess dress slowly became rags soaked in blood and the sweet little lace gloves turned into blood dripping from her hands as she reached for his face when he got to her.

“Dance with me Steven, I never got to dance with you,” she said and stumbled forward as her strappy shoes became barbed wire. 

The dance hall floor became the black mud of a battlefield that hasn’t seen real rain, something he knew too well. The wet dirt churned up by fighting, the mud sticky and cloying with the sick, sweet scent of blood and the reek of death everywhere. A band played music on the stage from behind fencing, all gaunt and in suits of threadbare grey and white stripes with yellow stars and pink triangles on their lapels. Darcy moaned and pitched into his arms.

“Darcy… Sweetheart, Angel, what happened?”

“War, war and torture, squids and death, always more death….” She giggled, high pitched and horrifying. “Death that should have been us, you and me and Bucky and all of us dead and ash…. Ring around the rosy, pockets full of posies,” red poppy blossoms fell from her lips as she coughed a wet, wracking cough, a TB cough except for the petals replacing blood.

_ Ashes, ashes, we all fall….  _ The voice was Darcy’s but it wasn’t coming from her lips as she coughed so hard she fell to her knees. He struggled through the mud to help her, but she straightened up like a spasm, walking closer with the awkwardness of a puppet in the hands of an amateur.

“We all fall, Steven. Bucky fell and you fell, and I was there, did you know that? All the way down the rabbit hole and off with our heads.” She tilted her head. “Where was I? Oh, yes, ashes. My people made into ashes, the murder goes unpunished, soon we’ll all be ashes. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!”

“DARCY!” he cried out as she crumpled to the ground.

“I’m here, Steve, I’m here.”

He sat up and looked around him. The hotel, Darcy beside him, petting his hair and curled up in a blue NASA sleep shirt with her legs bare to him. He must have been staring, since she moved his face to look at her.

“Legs pretty on pretty girl, but pretty girl want pretty boy to sleep now, yes?”

“I’m not a caveman, Darcy.”

“Good, you had me worried. Either you regressed or were having some bad shellshock. Bad shellshock I can help with, going Neanderthal, not so much. Need to talk?”

“I don’t want to relive that dream.”

“I hear you. But it wasn’t real in any way other than the ways you let it be real now that you are awake, you get to choose how much power it has in your life, you are the boss of it, not the other way around. We learned that during the war, remember? The hospital, the doctors, I know they told me that, I’m sure they told you. Come here, lay on me and let me sing to you.” She beckoned him into her arms.

“Darce….” He pulled away and she put a finger on his lips.

“Hush, come here, you scared me and I want to hold you. I didn’t know it was that scary on the outside until tonight. Jane is tougher than I thought, and I already thought she was a badass. She did this for me, you know, when it was bad. Let me pay it forward.” She opened her arms again and this time he let her pull him in.

He settled into her arms, head on her breast where he could hear her heart.

“Come my love and I ’ll tell you a tale, of boys and a girl and their love story. ….” As she sang she carded fingers through his hair and he felt himself relax.

When he slept again, he had no dreams he remembered once he woke up.

<^>

In an undisclosed location in a vault, Alexander Peirce re-read the report. Rogers was loose. Fury had let him go, with a civilian who had no record with SHIELD. He was ranting about all this to the cryotube, because he couldn’t rant to a live person. He didn’t know the cryo had stopped freezing brain processes ages ago, a few too many interactions between electric shocks and Einstein-Rosen bridges. He had no way of knowing about the bridges, so how could he know?

The man in the tube would have smiled if it weren’t for the numbing cold that did force him into a torpor-like state, and the fact he knew he still needed to play the mindless, obedient attack dog. Darcy Lewis had swept Steve Rogers right out from under the Not Steve, who had stopped looking like Steve many missions back. He had freedom, open air, blue skies, and Darcy. A dream come true. 

Of course, and the man in the tube knew this, even if he didn’t remember his own name, Steve would never call it a dream come true until the man in the tube had it too. Steve would fight. He always fought. He’d fight, and Darcy would fight, and then there would be freedom, freedom and the sky and Darcy and Steve. The sky, the one thing that you can’t take away, not forever. Darcy who protects and shelters and keeps secrets for those she deems worthy, and Steve who fights and stands up again with a smirk, and tries to free the world, even when he can only reach some of it, even when the world isn’t acting particularly worthy. 

The Not Steve and his people with their missions would never understand that. But soon, soon there would be Darcy and Steve and sky that can't be taken away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Zonking out- slang for falling asleep.  
> Black and blu- not a typo, a burger with Cajun seasoning and blu cheese crumbles. Darcy orders the veggie because she actually likes veggie burgers done right and a fancy hotel restaurant would do them right, not for weight issues.  
> Maudlin- an old-fashioned word for mopey or depressed, often used with the word drunk, like a weepy drunk.  
> Frog- WWII American slang for French person, NOT a derogatory here, although it can be used that way.  
> Moscato- a sweet white wine, very tasty and good for lightweight drinkers.  
> Big Band Swing- very energetic and peppy, meant to dance to.  
> Crooners- Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, 'nuff said.  
> Jackson Pollack- an artist known for vibrant and clashing colors in random designs.  
> Bug zapper- a device to detect and jam listening devices.  
> Shellshock- the WWII word for PTSD.
> 
> Notes:  
> Challenge meals are a bizarre, mostly American tradition of eating a ridiculously large meal in a short span of time by yourself. They can be very expensive, but usually if you can finish in the time limit, it's free. The Champ is the one with the fastest time. They're related to the concept of mukbang, in that the challenge is hyped as entertainment to the rest of the patrons of the restaurant.
> 
> Many victims of PTSD deny the PTSD, claim to be fine, when they clearly are holding on by a thread. Forcing them to confront it is not as helpful as say, an intervention for an alcoholic and can make that thread snap. Jane and Darcy do the right thing here, waiting for the issue to show as a symptom (both the irrational belief he is wrong in instinctively reaching for his support network and the night terror), treating it, and letting him know it is OK to accept help.
> 
> Deafness can be hard to accept, especially if it hits young, and with Dernier being the bomb guy, he had ear damage that probably caused early deafness. They knew it would, but when it happened he went into denial. That's pretty common.
> 
> Torch songs come in two types, the "I'm so in love with you I feel like I'm burning" song and the "My man done me wrong and I hate him" song, although it was not until post war Torch songs moved into the "My man done me wrong so fuck that loser, I'm over it" zone. For Steve "My man done me wrong" was usually followed by by "but love is forever so I will stand by him even though he's scum". Steve does not like this message. A man does you wrong, you set the bastard's clothing on fire.
> 
> Story of Us is a Taylor Swift song that has a refrain I think fits the Post-Planes Trains and Omigodfeels chapter. Namely the line "I don't know what to say since the twist of fate when it all broke down and the story of us looks a lot like a tragedy now."
> 
> PMJ did not come out until later, but I'm setting them as debuting earlier because Bucky and Steve would be all over songs from Darcy's time sounding like songs they grew up with, or from eras they missed.
> 
> I borrowed concepts for Steve's night terror liberally from Age of Ultron, but did not duplicate it. I basically just took the empty dance hall and made it worse. The band is based on the prisoners of the concentration camps, who wore thin and re-washed pajama-like uniforms, and wore identification markers (yellow Stars of David were the Jewish prisoners, pink triangles for anyone on the queer spectrum) to help prevent cooperation among prisoners.
> 
> The poem about ring around the rosy was about plague, posies were to banish illness and the ashes were the cremains of the plague dead, and falling down was about dying. Poppies in particular were chosen because they are used to remember the dead of WWI, and the horror of that was something Steve grew up with, poppies are a death-flower to him, but unlike calla lilies, they represent violent and early deaths.
> 
> "Down the rabbit hole" and "off with their heads" are lines from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, a very creepy book that is somehow children's lit.
> 
> She sings the end credits song from The Princess Bride, Storybook Love, except she altered it to tell a very specific love story.

**Author's Note:**

> T-t-th-that's all folks!
> 
> I'll see you soon with an Outtakes work featuring moments that fall chronologically in this work. I'm hoping this can help us keep the reading order smooth and easy to follow.


End file.
